I do not have enough room or money to culture mysids or copopods. Does anyone know just how to take care of these guys if I just order them? I would much rather culture them but I can't. Do I just need a tub full of salt water and a powerhead or what? My LFS sells live copopods. Thats a plus.

Thanks

You can keep them in a tank, but they will be very hard to extract later when needed. They will kill and eat each other if not given enough rock to hide in. You might put them in a tub with lots of rubble, then just take pieces of the rubble as food is needed. They will come out of the pieces of rock.

Would it need to live rock or can I just wash some rocks from my back yard?

Definitely live rock.

We keep zooplankton alive for feeding. We keep them in salt water with a bubbler no rocks but we assume they live in the water column. If adding rocks I'd be very wary of using ones from the garden as they may well be contaminated with chemicals (from pesticides/herbicides/fertilizers etc) and if they have any porousity you won't be able to get it out readily. You probably don't need to go as far as live rock but I would certainly get "dead" rock from your lfs rather than garden rocks. A fine mesh net like a brine shrimp net (http://www.aquaticeco.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/product.detail/iid/3189/cid/914) should be able to scoop them out of the tank.

Cheers

J

This is going to sound stupid but what is the bubbler for?

Oxygen, I would think.

As I understand it in laymen's terms, an air stone or any openly flowing water (like a filter overflow) and surface tension breakage allow CO2 to exchange with air, thus reducing the carbon dioxide and replacing the oxygen. Without the exchange, even fish will die rather quickly of suffocation.

Between my skimmer, hang-on filter and cannister filter (all in my sump), I have removed the air stone from Octane's tank but would loose all my clowns in a matter of hours in my tall skinny tank that is filtered only by a cannister. Since there is very little surface area and no openly flowing water, I have learned, the hard way, that a battery backup designed to cut ON if the power goes off is an absolute necessity for that tank.

Muscox,

I'm attempting to culture copepods (tigger pods) as of today. I bought a little plastic betta box that's closed off except for openings at the top. I put in a piece of live rock, an air stone (more for circulation than O2), and a bottle of live tigger pod solution. This is basically a cheap in-tank refugium, and it's inside a 10-gallon tank for my mandarin goby.
I also added brown and red algae to grow as a food source for the copepods.
I believe this is going to work, but I welcome suggestions from the group.

Cheers!

The bubbler is for O2 and for water movement so you don't need to add anything more complicated, we don't attach these to the flow through system.

J

Jean,
Do you grow out your pods in the dark? Observation suggest that a dark or black plastic box works better than a well lit area but it may be that I am observing food source rather than lighting differences.