Growing Copepods

[Whatsfish]

Hi there!

So heres the deal.

My GF has a 12G cube tank thing, filter and stuff all together etc etc. Anywho, she had a green mandarin Gobys in the tank and it.. you guessed it, died.

The Goby being her favorite fish I got the idea to figure out where it failed and then try again.

After some researcher via the machine computing machine I came to discover that green mandarin gobys eat copepods and are very difficult to feed anything else. >.<

I've read around and I understand that its hard to have a goby in a small tank, but I want this to happen.

solution?

Raise copepods seperately and replenish the tanks population every couple of days.

Inspired by [Only Registered Users Can See Links.] a very interesting article.

Im gettin the Copepods now and I have a bunch of mason jars and and air pumps set up. Oh and salt water.

Whats my question?
Well, first off, does anyone have any experience with copepods and advice.
Second if you have experience with copepods what can i feed them besides plankton, like one of the articles suggest.


Thanks :]

[travie]

You would need to feed the tank/Mandarin copepods daily in order to keep the Mandarin alive. Otherwise I don't have the experience yet of raising copepods.

[labnjab]

Your gonna need a tank with at least 100 lbs of live rock that has been running for close to a year to keep a mandarin fed. Your not going to be able to keep up with its dietary needs to keep it fed by growing copepods and a 12 gallon is way to small for one anyways

[Dave66]

Hi there!

So heres the deal.

My GF has a 12G cube tank thing, filter and stuff all together etc etc. Anywho, she had a green mandarin Gobys in the tank and it.. you guessed it, died.

The Goby being her favorite fish I got the idea to figure out where it failed and then try again.

After some researcher via the machine computing machine I came to discover that green mandarin gobys eat copepods and are very difficult to feed anything else. >.<

I've read around and I understand that its hard to have a goby in a small tank, but I want this to happen.

solution?

Raise copepods seperately and replenish the tanks population every couple of days.

Inspired by [Only Registered Users Can See Links.] a very interesting article.

Im gettin the Copepods now and I have a bunch of mason jars and and air pumps set up. Oh and salt water.

Whats my question?
Well, first off, does anyone have any experience with copepods and advice.
Second if you have experience with copepods what can i feed them besides plankton, like one of the articles suggest.


Thanks :]

Copepods aren't terribly difficult to culture, since I've done so for several years for the mandarin group in one of my reefs. You'd have to culture marine micro-algae with the addition of a small particulate food (coral vital is a brand) to keep them fed, and you'll need a net with a five-micron mesh to be able to dip out the copepods to feed the fish. You'd have to feed that mandarin twice a day to have a hope of keeping him long term.

There are sources for copepod start ups. Contact me via PM for more information.

Also, a trick with keeping mandarins is to attach as many refugiums as you can to the tank. Equipped with live rock rubble, refugiums can produce a near constant flow of micro-crustacean life, including copepods. Mandarins need to forage all day, so refugiums plus copepod culture is the way to do it.

Dave

[Whatsfish]

Thank you for the information. Any additional suggestions would be great, also once i get everything up and running I hope to have updates on growth (or my failure) :P

[forgetmyname]

[Only Registered Users Can See Links.]

Thought I'd add this. It's pretty strongly biased towards getting it to work and the entire article was based on his "research" which led him to his conclusion.. but worth a read. :) Goodluck mate wish I knew more!