Culture Journal, Species: Tigriopus californicus

General
Species:  Tigriopus californicus (Tigger pods)
Species description: Large red harpacticoid copepod
Culture source (link if possible):  reef nutrition http://reefnutrition.com/tigger_pods.php
If algae, CCMP # (Optional): 
Culture Establishment Date:  July 14, 2011
Continuation Date: 

Culturing Vessel Details
Salinity:  ranges from 1.025 to 1.050 SG, usually around 1.030-1.035 SG
Temperature:  room temp, varies from 62-80F depending on season, around 68F most of the time
pH: 

Vessel description:  5 gallon buckets and 2 liter soda bottles
Lighting description:  single T8 sitting on top of the buckets
Lighting cycle:  ~8 hours a day
Aeration description:  none

Methodologies
Split methodology: pour water through sieve to collect pods as needed and replace with fresh natural seawater (filtered and UV sterilized). I usually split anywhere from 2-8 times per month. 

Culture medium description: 
I feed exclusively with phyto-feast live (Pavlova, Isochrysis, Thalassiosira, Tetraselmis and Nannochloropsis) about once a week. The light keeps the phyto alive so it reproduces within the culture, cleaning the water and allowing me to feed less often. 

Cell count:
~100-300 pods per liter upon visual inspection, possibly more since nauplii can be hard to see

Reference links:  

Additional Information
(No Pictures or Videos in the Section Please)
Notes: 
I currently have 4 cultures (two 5 gallon buckets and two 2 liter soda bottles). The soda bottles and one bucket are pure Tigriopus cultures, while one of the buckets is co-cultured with live brine shrimp. I add my extra baby brine to the bucket whenever I have extras. I believe many of them are eaten by the tigger pods (I have witnessed tigger pods latching onto the baby brine), but presumably once they reach a certain size, the pods leave them alone and they grow to adulthood. Interestingly, though I treat all the cultures exactly the same way, the one with brine shrimp does much much better than the other cultures. I think this may have something to do with the added nutrition from eating the baby brine. 
 
A note on aeration: I used to have airlines in my buckets and I experimented with different amounts of flow, from a few bubbles per second, up to a full rolling boil. However, they seem to like it best and reproduce fastest with no flow at all. 


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Clinging on and eating are very different.  They aren't eating them, but the stress of having one hitchhike could very well take down artemia.  I've co-cultured them and had just the opposite... my artemia ate the copepods out of house and home making me continually add fresh phyto.
 
The one thing that is cool is the copepods eat the molts of the artemia, which molt often.

Ok I wasn't sure if they were actually eating them or what was going on. Perhaps the artemia molts are what make the pods do better. As for the brine eating the pods, I've never had a problem with that, even when I had a high density of brine in there. They just swim around in circles all day. 

I co-culture both in my outdoor tubs during the summer and have no issues. Haven't been able to do it with any other type of copepod though.

http://www.fishtalpropagations.com/#!home/mainPage
"Making captive breeding easier."

Me neither, but its due to artemia are filter feeders and cannot eat copepods.  The problem was they were eating all the phyto.

Ok I see what you mean now. I avoid that problem by adding tons of phyto and keeping the light on

After reading of the success some people have had in co-culturing these copepods with rotifers, I decided to give it a try. So about 6 weeks ago, I added 3 fluid ounces of unconcentrated rotifer culture to my bucket of tigger pods already being co-cultured with brine shrimp. At first I thought they had died, but after a few weeks, they bloomed. Shortly after, the tigger pods bloomed like I've never seen before. Here's a pic from a few days ago. I did a 50% split just 24 hours before.

 
As you can see, I have A LOT more pods than I did before. I believe this can be attributed to the added nutrition the rotifers provide, and also to the more frequent feedings and splitting I do to keep the rotifer population healthy.