Culture Journal, Species: [Apocyclops Panamensis]

General
Species:  Apocyclops Panamensis
Species description:  Copepod
Culture source (link if possible):  Umm_Fish?
If algae, CCMP # (Optional): 
http://ccmp.bigelow.edu/
Culture Establishment Date:  December 9, 2012
Continuation Date: 

Culturing Vessel Details
Salinity:  1.022
Temperature:    Around 70-75°F
pH:  Not Measured

Vessel description:  10 quart grey bucket 
Lighting description:  Ambient, lights are a single florescent bulb attached to the ceiling of the room.  
Lighting cycle:  Ambient, usually on for 10-12 hours per day.
Aeration description:  No lid, and a bubbler

Methodologies
Split methodology: NA

Culture medium description: 
Cell count: 
Reference links:   

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



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Decided to bring this back up, since I'm trying a different food for them. I am going to try and feed my panamensis the same way I do my O. Marina. I do a 1:6 drop ratio per gallon with RGComplete (1) and N-Rich PL Plus (6). I feed them twice a day during the school week and three times during weekends.

How has this culture been doing so far for you? Any population booms so far? This will likely be my target species for use in raising dragonet larvae and is the current focus of all of my 'homework' for this project.

What were you feeding intially and why the change?

Thanks in advance,
Joe

Joe,
 
Initially I was feeding them O. Marina that I had cultured until I got a good 3 buckets full.  Then I needed to find another way to have the space to culture them, so I moved onto 5 Gallon buckets. These buckets are about 2/3 full and have lids. There is stiff airline tubing running down to the bottom of the tub, and for keeping the airline from curving, I cut a piece of pvc that's about 9 inches and put the airline through it. Then, for experimental purposes, I tried the RG Complete and the N-Rich PL Plus in a 1-6 drop ration. Using this experimental food ratio, I now have 5 buckets of Panemensis. They are each at different densities, most likely my fault on not splitting them as often as I needed to. 

Based on your results so far, would you be comfortable raising them on nothing but the RGComplete and N-Rich+?

Yes, I would. But I am going to do experiments to figure out how to improve my cultures and have a denser culture without using the standard O. Marina method. 

Live phytoplankton works great. I was using a mixture of nannochloropsis and tetraselmis. I'm sure they would love isochrysis

Thanks for the idea Helix. I've got some cultures of all three of those. My experiments are more towards the non-live things. Haven't seen much of that and thought I'd atleast try

It's great that you are exploring the unknown. Why are you trying to use non-living cells? Ease of use and storage?

Pretty much. Trying to find a more "conventional" way to culture species without live algae's and just using pastes. 

Conventional or convenient? :-p
 
You could try and concentrate your algae you grow through the use of a protein skimmer (DAF).

While I do like the idea of live algae for water quality purposes, I'd be lying if I didn't say I'm attracted to the idea of pastes. I personally am a student and full time employed. I also live in a 700sq foot apartment and already have arguably too many tanks running. I could get phyto cultures going if I rearrange and all but, the way I see it, there's still nothing lazy about rearing pelagic larvae and copepods lol

True that I'm currently a student too, in highschool so it's tough for me to find time to do this wonderful hobby but I'm managing it pretty good.

Which is easier to culture, tangerines or these?  How would I go about getting a starter culture?

College student here too :-p, last semester!
 
This probably isnt the appropiate place to discuss this, but Apopcyclops didnt seem that tricky. If I had a series of screens, it would have made it much easier.

 
Do you have to have O. marina?  Know where I could get a starter culture from?

Andy did a great write up on culturing these copepods:
http://www.mbisite.org/Forums/tm.aspx?m=58366
 
O. marina is not required, it is used because o. marina eats paste and then copepods eat o. marina. If you are culturing live phyto, then you can feed that directly to the copepods.

Yup. Jim Welsh originally tried the idea of raising them on pastes.

That was a great write up on the species. Glad to hear they're less tricky than some other species.

Ok so after a horrible system wide crash, due to evaporation.... I managed to find another starter culture of these guys and MAN was it loaded. I lost count at 100 adults in the tiny waterbottle full of them. I will not be trying anything new with these guys, seeing as how I have already successfully worked on them thus far. In the future, I will probably run a test to see if A. these guys are actually eating the N-Rich (I was not 100% sure at the time I made this) And B. IF they are eating it, does it help the survival rate of larvae and full on development. Here are some photos of an adult and a nauplii. The adult photo was at 40x and the nauplii was at 100x: 
Nauplii:
 
Adult:

Just so you know, I've tried these guys on NRich several times. I may have been over-feeding, but my results were: The adults survived fine on it but the naups couldn't or wouldn't eat it, so the cultures eventually died off. That said, I wish you much better luck than I had.

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

Umm_Fish, Thanks for telling me your experience, I find it very interesting! How long did you have the culture going? I kept my two cultures going for ALMOST 6 months off of the RG and NRich mixed together.

Then you did much better than I and I would say that you have likely been successful. I tried 5 times and managed about 6 weeks per try each, with the cultures having an initial bloom then slowly getting more and more sparse as time went on.

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

Now, I will also put into consideration with what you said Andy, and I will also feed one culture on pure Isocrysis when I get back from the conference in two weeks. I might play around with the amount of iso just to see how it affects it.

Well, I had this culture crash on me last year, a little after I had made that post actually! I managed to track down a source, and I'll have them after I get back from the conference!

Double post

Got them after the conference, and have had the culture up and running. It's doing great! Right now I'm just feeding RG, but once I get more iso growing, I will be feeding that as well, hopefully the nauplii will like the iso more than the RG

Double Post