Culture Journal, Species: Apocyclops panamensis

General
Species:  Apocyclops panamensis
Species description:  Cyclopoid copepod
Culture source (link if possible):  Luis Magnasco
If algae, CCMP # (Optional): 
http://ccmp.bigelow.edu/
Culture Establishment Date:  April, 2010
Continuation Date:  July, 2010

Culturing Vessel Details
Salinity:  1.026
Temperature:    Quite varied, from 55F to 75F
pH:  Not measured

Vessel description: 
Lighting description:  Not really relevant
Lighting cycle:  Not really relevant
Aeration description:  Anything from vigorous aeration to no aeration at all.  Really doesn't matter, as far as I can tell.

Methodologies
Split methodology:   Split whenever you feel like it.  Not really picky, as long as you get at least one gravid female, or one female and one male.

Culture medium description: 
(this could range, example with algae could be “10ml per l of guillards F formulation” or with A. tonsa it would be more like “300ml per day of algal mixture containing gymnodynium, tetraselmis, isochrysis, and rhodomonas” )   Any salt or brackish water.  They are really not very picky.

Cell count:
Varies.  Can be very dense, or quite sparse, depending on how much care I am giving them.

Reference links:  

Additional Information
(No Pictures or Videos in the Section Please)
Notes: 
This appears to be a VERY hardy pelagic copepod that will endure many, many different culture practices and food sources.  At the very least, it has been used to raise Doryrhamphus excisus (Bluestripe pipefish), which I have demonstrated repeatedly, and documented in my journal on the MBI site for that speices.  I believe it can be used to help raise many other species of marine fish, but this will have to be documented by various fish breeders.



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I have had a continuous culture of this copepod in my care for over 2 and 1/2 years now.  I have used it to raise many batches of Doryrhamphus excisus.  The primary food I have used to raise this copepod during the 2 and 1/2 years I have kept it has been live Isochrysis phytoplankton.
 
Recently, I have  been experimenting with using alternative foods to raise this copepod.  I have found that I can get good results raising this copepod using only the RGComplete product from Reed Mariculture, which is intended as a food for rotifer cultures.
 
The ability to grow a nutritious, pelagic, small, live copepod with a readily available preserved phytoplankton product has the potential to be a revolutionary development for marine fish breeders.
 
I would like it very much if another breeder would be so kind as to confirm my findings.  All you need is a starter culture of Apocyclops and some RGComplete.  Please let me know if you need my assistance with this project.
 
 

I've been keeping this copepod going for over a year  on RGcomplete alone.  No issues. 

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

Ok, that is exciting! 

Don't let fear and common sense stop you! =]

So do they still multiply well just on rg compleate? Or does it just work better for maintenance

Is o marina, useful or just an unessacery step in the process?

I'm thinking that while Oxyrrhis marina might be useful as a feed for Apocyclops due to a possible trophic upgrading effect, it is probably unnecessary.  The benefit derived may very well not be worth the hassle of maintaining yet another culture.  That's the beauty of the simple combination of Apocyclops + RGComplete:  Nutritious, small, pelagic copepod nauplii easily grown and maintained.
 
My initial anecdotal observation is that when using RGComplete alone, I am getting reproduction rates that rival what I see when using live Isochrysis.  Not quite as good, but close.

Wow almost too good to be true

I'll volunteer Amphispur to try raising these on RGComplete.  He's just started on A. panamensis from Ummfish's cultures.  He's using the O. marina as the food but he can try using just the RGComplete in a separate system.
 
What kind of protocol would you recommend, i.e. drops/gallon.  He as easy access to 2.5 Gallon gray round buckets and 1 quart, wide mouth mason jars.
 
All of this is good experience for him.  By the way, he's using a smaller scale version of your microwave sterilization technique.  Several quart jars fit in the microwave.

I confess, I've been quite unscientific about it!  I've just been keeping the water very lightly tinted.  Seems to work quite well.  Maybe the assignment should be to do a quantitative, rather than qualitative, experiment.  It already appears that it is possible to raise them with RGComplete alone.  What we now need is how many drops / day / liter is the optimum feed rate, or something like that.  How does that sound?

That works.  He can also do a similar experiment for pseudodiaptomus.

Hey Jim, sorry to revise a VERY old thread, but I just remembered how my dad "volunteered" me for that experiment. Would you like the results posted onto here?

YES.  :-)

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

Ok so pretty much I did a ratio of one drop per gallon of RG, now I also used some N-Rich + as well, 8 drops per 5 gallons, so that would be around 1 to 2 drops per gallon, and I was able to keep that culture going for a pretty long time, 4 months or so I believe, here is my journal on it: http://www.mbisite.org/Forums/tm.aspx?m=78357

The only reason why my culture went south was because I was using expired RG, didn't find that out til later, but otherwise the culture was doing great.

 
Absent from this description is the frequency of the feedings.  Is that per hour, per day, per week per month, or what?
 

Thanks Jim, I knew I was forgetting something! The feedings were twice a day, usually at around 5am and 6 to 7ish pm