Copepod culture manual is now up ^^^^. Questions go here.

I've posted the copepod manual. It's stuck to the top and locked. Please post questions here.
 
Thanks!

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

How do you identify a brooding female?  How do they look different when just shining a flashlight through a jar?

Aha! Good question and thank you for reminding me!
 
This is where we use one of Jim's photos (and I'll post it to the other thread, too):
 

 
Note: This is Jim Welsh's photo. He's been kind enough to let us use them in the class. Jim owns the copyright, though. Thanks, Jim!

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

Not all species are egg carriers.  Acartia tonsa, for example, are egg dispersers.  I'm not sure how to tell if an A. tonsa female is gravid.
 
For the species that do carry eggs, it is very easy to identify the gravid females.  The gravid Apocyclops females look more like dumbbells or figure eights ("8") to my eyes, instead of exclamation points without the dot ("!").  For larger species, like Arctodiaptomus ("Tangerines"), the eggs are very obvious.

Excellent.  Thank you both.

So, a question for all us classmates: In the culture manual, I mentioned that you should feed the copepods 1/5 of their volume of O. marina every day. What to you do if you have leftover O. marina and extra room in your copepod buckets, even after feeding them all?
 
a) Top 'em up.
b) Throw away the extra O. marina.
 
And, why did you pick your answer?

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

Taking a wild stab at this, I would throw the extra O marina out.  If there's extra food one day, the copepod population would increase.  The next day, the extra food isn't available, causing less food per pod, causing some die off.  Means extra waste in the water while things stabilize again.
 
Assuming that copepods behave like rotifers and population density will reach a balance with available food.

that's exactly what I think as well.

I'm mixed on this one, really I would opt for
 
3) feed another culture
 
But maintaining population dynamics is an excellent reason for tossing the extra, salinity creep is also a phenomena that can be caused by adding extra saline cultures and not adjusting the rest of the methodology to suit.  Adding more of this or that means adjustment should be taken later to keep balance.

Pelagically yours,
~J      

I wouldn't feed the extra O. Marina to the copepods.  I believe they adjust to the food supply. I am guessing if you throw in a bunch extra it could crash the culture.  I would treat it like a factory, do the same thing every day, feed the same amount let the pods adjust to the food supply. 

like Jish said... deposit... NO refunds  -thejrc

You guys are on the right track. First off, I have seen cultures go into panic mode and start to fail if I put in 50% of O. marina, so I know that it's an issue so we'll just take that as a given.
 
But I think there's several different things going on:
 
1. For many zooplankton, including copepods, when too much of their food becomes available it actually suppresses feeding. Some of that might be going on, but these copepods take a pretty good long time to starve (a couple of weeks) and the problems start to show up almost immediately, so I don't think that's all of it.
 
2. Come with me here for a minute: We just added a _ton_ of O. marina to the culture. Maybe the feeding mechanisms of the copepods are getting suppressed so the phyto is not getting cleared. At any rate, there's too much phyto in there for the copepods to clear even if the copepods _are_ eating it. We aren't adding any food for the phyto. The nutritional profile of the phyto very quickly drops through the floor. So, even if we add new phyto tomorrow what do the copepods encounter most? Crappy, low nutrition feed. That's if they are even eating at this point.
 
3. But I think the biggest deal is one that I brought up in #2: We aren't adding any food for the phyto. It's not the copepods that are crashing that kills the water quality. It's the phyto crashing that kills it.
 
At any rate, the whole thing quickly spirals through the floor. The first sign is a great big bacteria bloom. You are looking at your cultures every day, right? If you see lots of cloudy water (whether it be O. marina 'cause they didn't manage to clear it, or bacteria 'cause things are heading south), siphon your culture through a ~50 micron sieve and wash into new water and a new container. That'll get rid of whatever is making the water cloudy.

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

Clarifying questions, Andy:  You mention "phyto" several times in your last post, and also "food for the phyto".  Are you calling the O. marina "phyto"?  I've read before that you don't culture live phyto, so I'm confused.  O. marina, AFAIK, is a non-photosynthetic heterotrophic dinoflagellate protist, but doesn't qualify as phytoplankton.  Just trying to keep terms straight here, and make sure I understand you.
 
I tend to agree with Joe's 3) feed a new culture.  I also agree that if you have a protocol that works, don't mess with it, so don't feed any extra.
 
That said I'd like to throw out another idea:  4)  feed extra O. marina PLUS more phyto paste + ClorAm-X to the copepod culture.  Getting the proportions right might be difficult, but it's just an idea.

Sadly as I become more of a taxon geek this one gets more and more interesting!!  It really depends on what camp you're in at this point, the original classification of microalgae (common term phyto at this point) was dependant on only a few things... basically autotrophic single celled organism whose method of autotrophy was photosynthesis.  Coincedentally over time a ton of stuff got lumped in here and there as is common with the whole Kingdom protista under the linnaeus system... go figure if it was tiny and we didnt know where it fit it had to be a protist.... ergh thank you Haekel, coincedentally dinoflagellates are scrutinized as well now because of the mix.  And with all the fun new genetics we've seen in the last few decades taxonomy has become an all out war!!
 
Most consider Oxyrhiis to be dynophyta so still a phytoplankter by common call... whether this is correct or not is up to the science and of course opinion.  For our purposes here I think we need to focus on the methodologies more than the taxon (as we are teaching methodologies) but also be open to the fact that the taxon is different for this (and many other species) dependant on who is looking at it.
 
FWIW and personally... I no longer consider plankters as phytoplankters or zooplankters... I play more of a generic plankters in general mindset...  I look at size, movement, and target goal... I dont particularily care if such thing is animal, vegetable, or bacterial...  (aha!  bacterioplankters!!) One could argue that there are chemoplankters as well dependant on brass....  decaying matter does leave a nifty amino acid trail that by definition floats freely in the water column and by all means *must* be a plankter
 
All that taxon rant aside Jim I'm glad you brought that up!!  It's important to keep our species straight especially for those who are uncommon with many terminologies.  I read Andy's post to consider Oxyrrhiis as "phyto" which is acceptable IMHO though does blur the lines when we mention that we are feeding the Oxyrrhiis "phyto" as well.  Perhaps defining terms ahead of time will help stave the confusion, I would stick with O. marina as a label.
 
Just my $4.25
 
 

Pelagically yours,
~J      

Can you give what you find to be rough time frames on each part/phase.  I know observing is the key, but getting a roughy idea of time frames you see as a norm help people like me have a clue if they are doing things even remotely on que.

Jim, you are right to be confused. Earlier I set up the dichotomy, referring to autotrophs as "phyto" to differentiate from O marina (or "dinos"). I was trying to keep that straight so no one would be confused but I blew it. In essence, though, "phytoplankton" only means "way small plankton" (or something like that ) and doesn't necessarily refer to how the little thing feeds. To be honest, the real differentiation we should go with here is autotroph vs. mixotroph vs. heterotroph. But all that gets cumbersome. Sorry.

Caesra, I'm sorry, too, because I haven't started a culture from a starter in a really long time. But now that I think of it, here you go: I started a parvocalanus culture and it got contaminated with just a very few apocyclops, like maybe just two or three. Those turned into a thriving apocyclops culture in about a month. So, starting from a decent starter and given that you have food for the copepods from the get-go, I'd guess a thriving culture in 2-3 weeks. Seem right?

As for O marina, in good conditions the population can double every few hours. You should get decent cultures from starters in three to four days.

Does that answer your question?

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

We will see soon enough =)
 
As always, for those of us starting with little info, the more the marrier....there is no such thing as too much when you are trying to grasp onto new things.