Pod Culture Questions

[mad921]

Hey everybody. I've ordered some pods from oceanpods and am starting a culture when the arrive next week. I have a fairly standard set up ready to go and will be using a 2.5 gallon tank with a small air pump split off into 2 lines, etc.

To the question though, I was thinking over ways to transfer pods to my main tank and wondered if I could use pieces of rock. I have a few smaller pieces of now dead live rock and was wondering about rotating them in between the culture and main tank to transfer pods. The culture tank would be bare, so my theory at least is that the pods would congregate on any pieces of I put in there. So, I could leave a piece in the culture tank for a week or so, then transfer it to the main tank and rotate another piece into the culture tank. I'd be planning on leaving pieces pulled out of the main tank out to dry for a day or so before putting them back into the culture tank to avoid introducing any additional types of pods. Would that work?

Thanks!

 

[returnofsid]

The way you suggest does sound as if it'd work just fine. Another method I've heard of is to take a sponge from a sponge filter, get it wet with tank water, sprinkle a very small amount of flake food to it and squeeze it into the sponge. Add this sponge to the pod tank. The food will attract the pods and then you can add the sponge to your sump or HOB filter for a day or so. Another method would be to grow Chaeto in your pod tank. Every few days, rotate some of the chaeto into your main tank. I've got a 10 gallon pod culture tank with live sand, live rock and LOTS of chaeto. I've got some HUGE pods and mysid shrimp growing in it. I've also got a lot of bristle worms and bristle stars. Every once in awhile, I'll take out a small clump of chaeto and trade it out with some chaeto in the main tank. Seems to work great and my Mandarin Goby is getting fat and happy. Back to your live rock trade out suggestion....I do notice that when I move around a piece of the LR that's in the pod tank, there are a lot of pods and mysid milling around underneath of it.

 

[mad921]

Thanks for the reply. I've read some things that suggest introducing other types of pods to a copepod culture will slow the reproduction of the copepods so I turned away from the idea of introducing macros (and thus hitchikers) based on that.

The sponge is an interesting idea. Might give that a shot.