Culture Journal, Species: Tigriopus californicus



What are you feeding these guy and how often?

-Adam

This is my first go at this, I had been waiting for LFS to get a new set of bottles. 
 
This post for me was mostly a point in time post, because I started my brine months ago and have no clue exactly when.
 
I am mostly just following other's advice, I started with a small shot of rotigrow +, but there is an article in coral mag this month about these guys too, they suggested flakes.  I turned down the flow on the culture, as the article suggest that any flow might be counter productive.
 
I have been trying to start up some easy cultures so I have some variety. 

Ground pellet with high protein values and brewers yeast or omega yeast on top of alga gives a good round diet. Just watch the water quality

Pelagically yours,
~J      

So far all looks good, but I am trying to figure out how to do a bucket change.  These guys seem to want to stick to the side of the bucket, where all the goop is.  Any thoughts from anyone?

Yup... you will have to decant them in a tall container.
 
Swish everything into the water column, decant multiple times.

Thanks Gresh

Some images.  I have not decantered the culture yet, as time goes on it seems to get cleaner.  Going to try to test water params tomorrow.
 
There appears to be more pods in the culture than before, but it has also become infested with Rotifers.  So far I have been feedng a few pellets and flakes every other day or so, and some Rotigrow+ every day...about 1/4-1/2 ml....roughly two times a day.
 
When I observe it visually, It seems to have alot more than Tiger pods and rots, I am going to have to examine it closer when I get some time.
 



 
 
 

tiggers and rots grow very well togther, IMO.

So far I have maintained a feed of about .5 ml per day of RG+ and roughly .5ml of ClorAm-X every other day.  Every other day I have droped either some crushed small pellets or some flake into the bucket.  The rotifers still exist in the bucket, but not very dense.  The pods appear to be multiplying at this point.
 
Yesterday I split the culture for the first time.  The buckets were suprisingly clean.  I have not done any water changes on the culture.  During the split, I poured 1/2 of the culture into two new buckets of the same 2.5g size.  I filled it up with newly mixtured salt water (IO) to a sailinity of 1.021.

Just visually observing the tanks, I am starting to notice a considerably rise in the population.    Still pretty low density, but the numbers appear to be increasing slowly.