Am I doing something wrong??

[Adam'sShrimplet]

Ok I recently set up a 10 gal to just be a copepod breeder. There is a heater in with temp at about 78 and an airstone, about 5 pounds of LR and 10 of LS. There is no light besides what naturally enters the room. I feed about a few times a week with phytoplex. I put in a bottle of tiggerpods and am thinking about adding some other pods at some time. Well I haven't been noticing anyone in there moving around. Am I missing something or did I do something wrong? Please let me know any thoughts about it.

 

[mattleycrue76]

How long has the tank been up? It took me a while to see any real copepod poulation

 

[Adam'sShrimplet]

its been up and running about a month or so

 

[Allenfamily]

We have grown a lot of them starting with tiggerpods but we did have a light on the tank and we had some chaeto in there, other than that we did the same thing you described.

 

[SeaMonster]

do you have any micro algae in there?

 

[Tieg]

wait till night time and shine a flash light in there. I never see pods in my tanks during the day time but after an hour after the lights are off and its been dark...with a flash light I see all kinds of pods running around in the crevasses of the rocks. Good luck.

 

[Adam'sShrimplet]

We have grown a lot of them starting with tiggerpods but we did have a light on the tank and we had some chaeto in there, other than that we did the same thing you described.

How long did it take before your population grew?

 

[ziggy]

It took a couple of months before they looked like ants running arround. Just think of the first ones like adam and eve, 2 can only reproduce so fast, 10 even faster, 100 reproducing equals what you are looking for and so on.... Hopefully you get the concept. It will take time and you will question your husbandry skills, then one night you will see 20 or 30 and do a little happy dance.
Chad

 

[Allenfamily]

It took us a couple of months also and after tinking about it our chaeto came from Finn who has a gorgeous tank that has been running for a while so I'm sure that the chaeto had pods in it also. You might want to see if you can find some kind of refugium algae locally and add some light. After that I don't know if you can stop them from multiplying. We have some rubble in that tank and occasionally put the pieces in the display or sump to get the pods in there, or we rinse the chaeto in the tank(the fish like that better because the pods end up free swimming for a minute).