Zooplankton culturing question's

[Clintos]

Harpacticoid copepod Tigriopus californicus

anyone breed these or can tell me what eat's these guy's?

I'm looking into live food that might stay alive in the aquarium under the right nitritional environment?

so far I will culture amphipod's
thinking of culturing
Harpacticoid copepod Tigriopus californicus

and anything else that is fairly easy to culture and that will benifit the top 2

[rayjay]

When I was culturing them, I used Tahitian Blend cryopaste to feed them with. As you were mentioning culturing phyto, you could use a mixture of the live cultures to feed them.
I put a bottle of them in my main tank but have never seen any sign of them as in a sustained colony in the tank. They never appeared to hide and were very susceptible to predation.
My separate culture eventually crashed and I've not bothered with them again.

[Clintos]

thinking of giving them a shot probably in the top 5 to attempt to culture

Gladioferens imparipes calonoid I was also looking into them but can't find were to get the culture seems like australia has had good success with them as culture?

[Clintos]

heard they are really good for pipefish/seahorse etc and that they are some what easy to culture there primary diet consists of phytoplankton they spent most of there time in the water stream and can be a very good alternative to mysid

alot of research for 25 year's has shown them to be a very good alternative to rotifer's as for their nutritional content they can handle a wide range of temp and salinity

once hard to breed species have been shown to eat these guy's

[rayjay]

The problem with Calanoida type copepods is that they are free swimming.
Works great for seahorse fry, but are too small for larger seahorses.
Mandarins prefer to hunt the bottom and around the rock work, not in the open water.
For the mandarin fish you wish to keep, it's better to have Harpacticoida types (benthic, or bottom dwelling), or cyclopoida. (demersal, or, just above the benthic zone)

[Clintos]

Nitokra lacustris for mandarin's
Tigriopus californicus for seahorse

decided culture these guy's I still need to look into nitokra lacustris

hoping this will increase my chance's of having more then only 2 mandarin's in my 225G system

thinking hopefully if nitokra is smaller then the tiger's that I can harvest both of them at different time's of their life cycle to feed a lot of different size polyp's along with pipe fish,seahorse,mandarin

with 2-type's of phyto iso/nano hoping that it will feed other smaller filter feeding coral's/pod's etc and that this will almost supply most of the hufa, epa, dpa, protein, pigment's etc etc still looking into a few other additive like bread yeast etc


this pond will be for Tigriopus californicus

was hoping for idea's about how to create the flow I know it need's to be a gentle rolling boil with the possibility of yumma or zoo's inside the pond I'll use the set up minus the skimmer and pump in the pic's because the one pic is old dosing the 2 phyto I might use a type of doser or bubbling drip

it will be a long process because everything needs to be started fresh along with finding the best way to go about doing this

this is the pond that I will use luckily it didn't sell for $100 all included

Tigriopus californicus for now and coral prop pond in the long run

http://i458.photobucket.com/albums/qq303/clintos08/Picture160.jpg

http://i458.photobucket.com/albums/qq303/clintos08/Picture298.jpg

[Clintos]

The problem with Calanoida type copepods is that they are free swimming.
Works great for seahorse fry, but are too small for larger seahorses.
Mandarins prefer to hunt the bottom and around the rock work, not in the open water.
For the mandarin fish you wish to keep, it's better to have Harpacticoida types (benthic, or bottom dwelling), or cyclopoida. (demersal, or, just above the benthic zone)

Thank's afterward's I did a search/read some paper's and asked a bit of question's and decided for now to stick to herpacticoid