Welcome!

Hey! Not too bad. Thirty-six hours after thinking, "Hey, maybe I could mentor something..." we have ten people signed up for it and hopefully a few more to come. Welcome to you all. I hope I do a decent job for you.
 
We also have two "guest experts" (or "resident plankton geeks" or "people to keep me on my toes") in Joe and Jim. And let's be honest, either one of them could likely teach this better than I can. Heck, I got my first culture of Apocyclops from Jim, after all, and he's been fantastic helping me out with my cultures. And, as Joe's said, he crashes more cultures in a year than I've ever tried. Okay, maybe Joe didn't actually say that but it doesn't mean it isn't true.
 
I've always believed in taking a skeptical approach toward teachers (and "experts" in general). When a teacher steps in front of a room, the first thing they should do is defend why the heck they should be there in the first place so the students know exactly where they stand. Why am I here? Well, I've had Apocyclops in a continuous culture for maybe a year-and-a-half or two years (can you remember when you sent them to me, Jim?). That's pretty much my only qualification: I've managed to keep these guys alive. Please keep this in mind, too: I still have a lot to learn.
 
As far as the O. marina goes, I first isolated them from a dead rotifer culture, probably ... five or six years ago. I first decided to try to specifically culture them about three years ago. And then I decided to try them out as a copepod food about a year later. I've later found out that I'm not the first to offer them as an exclusive copepod food source. Luis found a reference in a science journal of at least one scientist who used O. marina as an sole food for copepods. O. marina used to be used a lot mixed together with T. Iso in copepod feeds and, in fact, the dino was once thought necessary to raising pelagic copepods. Scientists found that O. marina are really good at taking in good oils from the phyto they eat and concentrating them in their bodies, so they make really good copepod food. But then scientists also realized that O. marina are not actually necessary to keep their copepods alive, that T-Iso is enough all by itself. So the use of O. marina went out of favor, because O. marina was considered particularly difficult to culture (more so than T-Iso, which is saying something).
 
I didn't know any of that when I started trying this dino with copepods. Heck, I didn't even have an ID for it back then. Jim had to tell me what it was at least a year into me culturing the little guys.
 
So, I guess all of that was a long-winded way of telling you where I stand. I'm just like you will be after you've had a couple of years to work with these. I still have a lot to learn and I hope I learn a lot in the next few months with you all.

--Andy, the bucket man.
"Not to know the mandolin is to argue oneself unknown...." --Clara Lanza, 1886

Oh, and if you want to read more about questioning the guys standing in front of you, you should check out this guy's work: http://www.reefsmagazine.com/forum/reefs-magazine/100566-skeptical-reefkeeping-experts-changing-your-mind.html

--Andy, the bucket man.
"Not to know the mandolin is to argue oneself unknown...." --Clara Lanza, 1886

I'd like to learn more about this food source. I'm going to do some researching today and tomorrow and whatever you all can provide would be great too!

RLTW

180 Gallon Mixed Reef

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?" And I said, "Here am I. Send me!" Isaiah 6:8

RL if you find some more good info, please share with us all.

Rook

I sent you the "public domain" Apocyclops on June 21st 2010, Andy, so you've had them in continuous culture for over 13 months now.  I know you had another starter of Apocyclops a couple of months before that.
 
I think one of the greatest lessons to be learned from Andy's story above is the importance of collaboration in the process.  Last year, I had noticed a "contaminate" organism in my copepod cultures, and eventually tracked it down to my T-Iso culture.  This was about the same time that Andy posted about his organism, which looked virtually identical to mine.  I did some internet searches, came up with a putative ID, and then pinged a couple of professional marine biologists for confirmation of the ID that the organism was Oxyrrhis marina.  At about the same time, the Apocyclops had contaminated what had been given to me as an Acartia tonsa culture.  I was attempting to culture the "A. tonsa" with O. marina, and was describing the many "gravid females" I could see after a few weeks.  Luis pointed out that A. tonsa are egg dispersers, and don't carry their eggs, which led me to realize that the copepods I was culturing were NOT A. tonsa.  This led to some more investigation on Luis' part, which led to the positive ID of this exciting, prolific copepod as Apocyclops panamensis.
 
With just a couple of threads, active participating hobbyists were able to break new ground in live food culturing in multiple ways.  First, there is a new food item readily available among hobbyists as a potential feed for many pelagic copepod species, namely O. marina, which can be easily raised without live phyto.  Then, there is a prolific pelagic cyclopoid copepod with reasonably small nauplii that is also available among hobbyists.  Additionally, these threads have piqued the interest of many other hobbyists, some of whom will go on to do their own simple experiments, and perhaps develop hobbyist-level protocols for culturing even more food items useful to marine breeders.
 
Another example of how simple hobbyist involvement can contribute to developments in both the hobby and the industry is how I inadvertently helped to make Algagen's "Tangerines" copepods available in the United States.  Last year, I became interested in getting some Moina salina, but could find no source in the United States.  Long story short, the one source I knew of was in Germany.  I pestered the German vendor, and also mentioned the demand for Moina salina in the United States among seahorse enthusiasts.  She finally relented, and agreed to ship me some Moina, and decided to ship some to Eric of Algagen, too, so there would be a source in the US for them moving forward.  The "Tangerines" were a contaminate in the Moina shipments.  So, while I don't want to appear to take ANY credit for all the hard work the good people at Algagen have done cleaning up the cultures, and producing them in sufficient quantities to be able to market them, and then actually doing the marketing, I DO want to point out my small role as a hobbyist who had the perseverance to keep pestering the German vendor.  Had I not done so, the probability that either Moina salina or the "Tangerines" would currently be available in the US is very small.
 
My point is that each of us has talents and contributions to bring to the table, and that through collaboration in forums such as this one, some really great things can result.  We are just at the very beginning of what I think are going to be some exciting times in the world of live feed culturing.  Even just a year ago, just about the only copepods that were readily available were Tigriopus and Acartia.  There were some other species available from time to time, but they were (very) frequently out of stock.  Today, there at least a half dozen species of copepods available (and Moina salina, too!) regularly via various online retailers.  Additionally, there is the Apocyclops being made available here.  I believe that part of the demand that has enabled Algagen to successfully mass-produce these cultures (and their associated phytoplankton food products) stems from the increased interest in copepods amongst the hobbyists, driven in part by discussions such as the ones happening in this group.
 
By continuing to work together, who knows what exciting new developments may flow from our efforts?

Okay Jim, now you need to do an article for the MBI describing all these different copepods, etc., what their characteristics are and what they are commonly used for; so the rest of us can understanding what to use when, where to get them and how to culture them
 
Oh, and Good Work.

Rook

Absolutely, Jim. I guess the moral of the story is: Don't throw out your crashed cultures until you look at them through a microscope. You never know what you are going to find. Edit: I have a contaminant in my O. marina right now that I wonder about. It's thinner but longer than O. marina and wiggles around like a worm. Some day I'll try to track that one down.

--Andy, the bucket man.
"Not to know the mandolin is to argue oneself unknown...." --Clara Lanza, 1886