Culturing Tigriopus Californicus?

[printerdown01]

So there seem to be MANY methods to culturing these guys -with people saying they eat everything from diatoms, to bacteria, to meaty foods, to flake food, to leaves from backyard trees. It sounds like they truly eat diatoms, bacteria (hence flake food, leaves, and ditritus working), and things like rotifers. It is amazing that these are the most studied crustation, yet there is little to be found re: lab culture notes.

 

1) If you have cultured them what did YOU feed? Do they seem to do better with bacteria than algae sources?

 

2) Did you use air stones (from what I understand stagnant water seems to work the best)? Actually makes a lot of sense as these grow around my area and when I find them in tide pools they are always in the pools that I would expect to find everything dead in.

 

3) Did you run into high ammonia issues? If so can you simply use an ammonia reducer like you can with copepods?

 

4) What pit falls should I avoid?

 

5) Anything that caused your cultures to crash that I should know about?

 

6) About how often did you harvest and what % of water did you pull?

 

-Thanks

[gogo]

live phyto...low light...low bubble count in culture jars..they like decanted detritus....when doing a water change, collect the mulm in a bottle. the sediment that collects is perfect to start a culture with if its not already teeming with pods. don't scrub your culture jars, just rinse them with tank water. use a turkey baster, fifty percent harvest, with a top off with fresh phyto from a dense culture. a drop of yeast based food every other day helps.

i was feeding pipefish, what you culturing for?

[printerdown01]

Thanks! Wow, great info in there!!

 

At this point I am actually just culturing for fun. Will eventually be my food source for a tank I am setting up. Will be trying to feed mostly live in my next go around.

 

Thanks for all the harvesting info. This type of beta is really hard to find -very weird.

 

Anyone else? The more info here the better.

[sillycupid]

I grow mine in 22 ounce plastic cups with lids on. If you want to start, do not order cups online, just find a Starbucks addict and ask them for their cups, or go with them and order a large water. The lid keeps the dust and other debris from getting in. I only use live Nannochloropsis phytoplankton as a feed, dead phyto will only pollute the water. When starting from scratch, pour the copepods into a net, discard the old water and place them in new water. Add enough live phyto to make a light emerald green. Place in a window sill and wait one month. Do not touch it! Resist the urge to toss it! The light from the window sill will keep the phytoplankton alive and reproducing while the copepod movement provides microscopic water movement. In a month the twenty or so copepods you started with will explode into a thousand. Divide the population into more cups, and continue the process. If your cups start to not reproduce quickly enough, you need to diversify your genetics. Mix cup populations together or buy another bag of copepods to spice up their love lives.

[ndrobey]

If you are going to feed these critters to reef fish, get the type from San Diego/Baja, as they live at reef temperatures. If you are going to feed them to temperate/coldwater fish, get the type from Oregon/Washington, as they live in cold waters.

[sillycupid]

Here's a picture of my cups.

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Here is one single cup, ready for harvest.

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