Farming copepods for red scooter.

[liquidis54]

I've got a 10 gallon reef and added a red scooter blenny a couple weeks ago. He's done a pretty good job of cleaning up the copepods in my tank, faster than I thought for his small size. I'm wondering where to go from here though. Should I set up a farm and buy copepod cultures or should I find live pods and add them directly to the tank? I've seen pods for sale online but can they be kept over a period of time or do I have to use them all at once?

[BulkRate]

Dragonets do better when they have live foods to hunt... they're also much more active and fun to watch when doing so. Unfortunately, packages of live pods can get expensive so a mix of prepared food training (pellets/egg products) plus the pod farming's going to give you better results and a healthier fish in the long-term.

 

Good news is that of all the dragonets, "scooters" tend to take to prepared foods better than most. Nutramar is tricking back onto the market (at least in the US... in the EU it never seems to have left in the form of "Lobstereggs" from a couple of manufacturers). I had great results with V2O's soft-frozen zooplankton as well. Holy grail is to get yours onto a sinking pellet food... smaller particle sizes seem to work best for this fish. But even if the little guy takes to them I'd still supplement live pods either once a month from a purchased product or more frequently if you farm.

 

Warning: farming pods yourself can get frustrating and stressful itself. Some people have the knack and it's easy for them, others (like me) do not.

 

If you go the pod farmer route:

Best results I had was getting 2-3 packs of Algagen tsibe copepods and a locally-grown bottle of phytoplankton. One pack goes into tank immediately, and the other two used to start 2 tupperware containers of culture with the water tinted green with phyto. Keep the cultures brightly lit if possible to keep the phyto blooming so the pods have something to eat, or add more phyto to keep the water green. Harvest every couple of weeks to replenish the population in the display tank, and change culture's water every couple of weeks to forestall crashing. Eventually it will happen to at least one of the cultures, so be prepared to divide the surviving one to keep the pods flowing.

 

EDIT: if you;re of a DIY bent, look up paulb's mandarin feeder. Uses brine shrimp but seems to also work well as he's kept them fairly long-term. I keep meaning to try building one that looks like rockwork.

[liquidis54]

Thanks for the info! I'm into the DIY thing so I'll probably check that out. Also, I'm not sure I'll be able to find locally grown phyto. What other options do I have?

[BulkRate]

Phyto's relatively easy to grow... if there weren't several local reefers producing/packaging/selling it here I'd grow it myself as it's a good micronutrient food to provide a tank even if not actively trying to foster copepods.

 

Go on amazon/ebay, buy some low wattage warm white LED tape/rope lighting with a power supply. Wrap it around a clear 2 liter soda bottle, fill bottle with low proofage salt water (around 1.015-1.020 s.g.) and add a starter culture (Nannochloropsis is popular as it's nutrient rich and pretty hardy) + microalgae fertilizer/food (look on amazon or in Melev's article). Set up an an air pump to lightly bubble through the culture - needs to be agitated to prevent settling. Set up at least two culture bottles to allow you to re-seed on harvest or mishap.

 

Should get a usable harvest every couple weeks. Use it to keep your pod culture tinted bright green as well as to dose 5-10ml every day or two into your display tank.

 

There's surely a more detailed guide to do this under the NR Aquaculture sub-forum. Or here: http://www.melevsreef.com/node/1614