Culture Journal, Species: Tigriopus californicus

General
Species:  Tigriopus californicus
Species description:  Harpacticoid copepod
Culture source (link if possible):  Reef Nutrition http://wiki.reefnutrition.com/w/page/14004561/Tigger-Pods%20FAQ
If algae, CCMP # (Optional): 
http://ccmp.bigelow.edu/
Culture Establishment Date:  9/30/2011, sometime in 2012 that also failed prior to continuation date and now this attempt started on 1/31/13
Continuation Date:  ~12/30/2011 (old), new continuation date 4/30/13.  I am now at twice the continuation date and still producing and harvesting 100s of T. californicus pods each day from each 5 gallon bucket.

Culturing Vessel Details
Salinity:  1.020
Temperature:    Ambient room temperature 68 - 72 F
pH:  8.3

Vessel description:  5 gallon pail (filled with approximately 4 gallons)
Lighting description:  ambient room light from window at a distance
Lighting cycle:  based upon natural photoperiod
Aeration description:  One large airstone at a slow rate of flow

Methodologies
Split methodology: harvest as needed.

Culture medium description: 
Rotigrow plus sufficient to lightly tint the water green and supplimented with finely ground flake food.
Cell count: 
 Started with two bottles. 

Reference links:  

Additional Information
(No Pictures or Videos in the Section Please)
Notes: 



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Started to get an increase in ammonia noted last week, so a pre-seasoned piece of bioribbon from a CPR bak-pak 2 protein skimmer was added to the pail along with one piece of live rock to increase surface area for the pods and to provide some biological filtration.

Here are some pics of my culture buckets

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Here are some close-up of what is actually in those buckets above.

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I'd increase your salinity.  They rarely see even normal salinity in the wild.  Consider them like artemia in this sense.

Guess I'm not sure what you mean.  Are you saying they would prefer hypersalinity?  Artemia usually do best under lower salinity than seawater, which is what I am doing with the pods.

I've always done them at 1.025 - 1.030.  Our supplier, Artemia International suggests 1.025 - 1.030.  LIke anything, source of cysts has to do with how they live... GSL, SFB, Russia, China, etc. 
 
Tigger-Pods do best at or above "normal" salinity.  If you want to grow them for use, do that.  If you just want to play with them, don't worry about it.  Your temps are on the cool side as well so couple with the low salinity, your production will be suppressed.

I've done several trials now with these pods, and have never managed to get a good "crop" of them since my first time when the culture became contaminated with my microalgae culture.  Last month (2/1/13) I restarted my culture in plastic shoe boxes fed phytofeast.  I put these cultures in the sun so that I get some water evaporation and higher day time temps and lower evening temps.  There has been a slow progression of the cultures but I wouldn't call is explosive by any means.  Then someone on MBI told me about co-culturing these pods with rotifers.  Since I have been having so much luck with my rotifer cultures, I thought I would give it a shot.  I can't believe how well the pods are doing in with the rotifers.  I have since tried adding a few rotifers to the shoe box cultures to see if that would make a difference, but still nothing impressive.  From my experience, polyculture with rotifers is the easiest and best method to grow any kind of numbers of T. californicus indoors.

 
Certainly Reed Mariculture has the answer to these two questions:
 
1)  What is the ideal salinity for culturing Tigriopus californicus?
2)  What is the ideal temperature for culturing Tigriopus californicus?
 
Perhaps these two questions are interrelated, in which case feel free to interrelate the answer! 
 

I know what you are saying Jim, but I am trying to find an easy method for culturing.  With the shoe boxes in the window I am trying to re-create the CA environment with warm days and cool evenings, and I am allowing these to slowing increase in salinity through evaporation.  Each box gets bubbled for 24 hours every 72 hours.  The little shoe boxes are like mini greenhouses when the sun hits them and the water really gets warm fast, but cools down again over night.  However, the rotifer buckets are room time (cool) and hyposalinic (~1.015) yet the T. californicus seem to be thriving under those conditions.  So I am beginning to think that it is not the salinity and temperature alone that is necessary for productive cultures.  Does that make sense?

 
http://bit.ly/YPSlDt
 
Besides what said, the website has a salinity range and temperature range.  Other than what I have said here, and what the website says, I don't have much more to add.  You're really asking the wrong person if you want greater detail.  Attend http://www.mbiworkshop.com/ and maybe one of the speakers there will have more details

 
Feed and DO are important as well.  

I have to say I am VERY pleased with my T. californicus culture that being co-cultured with rotifers.  The population has exploded and there are just tons of pods (well at least thousands).  They are very easy to separate from the rotifers when I need them for feeding to fish fry.

I'm getting a starting culture of these soon as well.  Why does co-culturing them work like that?
 
Should I be co-culturing my other pod colonies?

Not sure why it works so well, but it sure seems to.  Also don't know if it would work with other pods or not.  Maybe you could try and let us know the results.  Good luck!

I've noticed a similar success with Tigriopus co-cultured with rotifers.  I'm pretty sure the Tigriopus are eating the rotifers.

 
I'm confused about why you provided a bit.ly link to a lmgtfy.com link to a Google search for "www.tiggerpods.com", when simply providing a link to www.tiggerpods.com would have been much more straightforward, but whatever, dude.  I found the temperature info on www.tiggerpods.com, where they have it in bold for emphasis, saying, "copepod populations were found at water temperatures of 6–33°C (42F to 92F)."  Good to know -- thanks!  I'll try to keep my Tigriopus between those two extremes.  FWIW, 6˚C = 43˚F, and 33˚C = 91˚F (but who's counting?).

Thanks also for the MBI Workshop suggestion.  It really had never occurred to me that I might be able to fly 2,500 miles several months from now in order to get an answer to a question that a civil forum response could have provided.

That the Tigriopus pods are eating the rotifers are certainly one possibility.  But I have also noticed that the rotifer cultures become more stable as well with less chance of a crash, but still with great numbers of rotifers, so I am wondering if the pods aren't just eating the bacteria (or over microorganisms like cilliates) or decomposing bodies of dead rotifers, thereby cleaning up the debris, and perhaps even the rotifer excriment, which I'm sure is small and nutrious.

How do you guys manage ammonia levels for these?  Do I need to be testing for ammonia at all?

In my experience, the rotifers are more sensitive to ammonia than the pods are.  If your water is good enough for the rotifers, the Tigriopus should do just fine.  I don't test ammonia, but I add ClorAm-X with every RG+ feeding.

Ouch Jim!

I'm with you on this.  I've tried culturing them indoors on nothing but live Iso, and they went from bright orange to clear within 2 weeks. Many died. Might have been water quality, but I think they are carnivores or ichthevores (?fish eaters) and I'm pretty sure they are roti-vores.  What I mean is I doubt that they are strictly vegetarians.  Outside culture with rotifers is simply effortless.
 

check out Kathy's Clowns, llc website:
http://kathysclowns.com
Captive bred clownfish and more
(Wholesale to the trade.)

They certainly are not strict herbivores... but they'd be hard pressed to capture live rotifers.  They have no fish to feed on in their natural environment, or smaller copepods.  They do get a lot of dead and decaying crabs and seaweed.
 
Rotifers to us, in our cultures, are a bad thing.  They eat all the phytoplankton and make for a worse copepod culture.  Ours stay bright red and are fed solely on phytoplankton... and no sun on them, inside.

LOL, I was actually just repeating something that I read somewhere, but not cannot recall where (shame on me for that).  What I can say is that I do notice a strange correlation in my Tigriopus cultures between the existence of rotifers, and an increase in the density of the Tigriopus in the cultures.  I really don't know what the root cause of my anecdotal observation is, or if it will really hold out over time.
 
I generally have an extreme phobia of having rotifers contaminate my copepod cultures, and have recently implemented measures whereby I am pasteurizing all of my copepod culture water to avoid cross-contamination by either rotifers or different copepod species (and these measures seem to be working well), since I am currently culturing seven different species of copepods and rotifers and also Moina salina, all in the same room. 
 
My Tigriopus cultures, on the other hand, are the exception to this rule.  In fact, I fear that Tigriopus will contaminate my rotifer cultures, which has happened to me more than once.  I find that Tigriopus will do very well in a rotifer culture, and then I end up with Tigriopus in my larvae tanks, which is not necessarily a good thing.  Accordingly, I also take measures to avoid cross contamination of my rotifer cultures with Tigriopus.
 
Suffice it to say that in general, co-culturing (a very nice term for "cross contamination") is not a good thing, and should be avoided.  It is always very easy to mix two cultures of things to get a co-culture.  It is usually very, very difficult to separate a co-culture of any two organisms into clean cultures of each (or either).

Which phytoplankton?
I had perhaps added too much live Iso to my original tigriopus culture.  The Iso began to get darker, and the tigers started dying.
 
I have read that the fluid that comes off of frozen fish food when it thaws, added to the culture, can make it bloom with tigriopus. I've tried a ml of such fluid this evening.  
 
If it is just stress that makes the tigriopus go clear, then perhaps mine will recover.  There are still some live ones in there. I am still feeding them live Isochrysis, just not so much.

check out Kathy's Clowns, llc website:
http://kathysclowns.com
Captive bred clownfish and more
(Wholesale to the trade.)

Would tetra be a good phyto to feed these along with iso?

Okay, hit continuation with this polyculture some time ago.  It was started sometime in Jan 2013 when I restarted my rotifer cultures.  Got so involved in raising my perc clowns, that I forgot to write down the exact date.  I am now harvesting 100s of T. californicus pods from each 5 gallon bucket per night.  They are being passed through a 180 micron screen that is nested into my 53 micron rotifer screen.  I just pore the 6 liters of polyculture water through the 180 screen and what ever pods are in it are fed to the baby clowns or cardinals.  Since it was started sometime in Jan 2013, I know I have gotten them well passed continuation, and still going.  I can't believe how many pods these cultures produce for harvest every day.  See pictures below.

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Okay, I just had to show off this latest batch.  Last weekend I cleaned the bottoms of my 2 rotifer/T. californicus cultures and placed the waste water into an empty 5 gal bucket.  There were so many pods I couldn't believe it.  All of those little red dots in the bucket are T. californicus pods!!!!!  I have been feeding them some rotifers and RG+ and in another 3 days will start feeding them to my newly hatch Gold Stripe Maroon larvae instead of NHBBS.

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