Culture Journal, Species: Euterpina acutifrons

General
Species:  Euterpina acutifrons
Species description:  Harpacticoid
Culture source (link if possible):  Fellow hobbyist
If algae, CCMP # (Optional): 
http://ccmp.bigelow.edu/
Culture Establishment Date:  4-19-2013; restarted 5-13-2013, re-started 9-5-2013 
Continuation Date:  4-24-2014

Culturing Vessel Details
Salinity:  1.020
Temperature: Ambient room temp, ~72   
pH:  Not measured

Vessel description:  4L water pitcher
Lighting description:  Ambient
Lighting cycle:  Sunrise to sunset, and/or when culture station lights or room lights are on
Aeration description:  Rolling bubbles from rigid airline




lture medium description:  
Culture is feed 30-50mL of Tetraselmis, Isochrysis, or Chaetoceros as needed to tint the water.  

Cell count:
 (if known)

Reference links:  
http://www.marinespecies.org/aphia.php?p=taxdetails&id=116162
http://copepodes.obs-banyuls.fr/en/fichesp.php?sp=1833
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2109.2011.02919.x/abstract
Additional Information
(No Pictures or Videos in the Section Please)
Notes: 
Water is sterilized using bleach and dechlorinated using sodium thiosulfate


You will be required to provide photographic evidence and as much detail as possible about your project in this thread.
If your thread does not contain detailed enough photos  and information the MBI Council will not be able to approve your reports.

Culture vessel:

 
Some microscope pics:

So I essentially let these guys crash out because I got caught up dealing with dog injuries.  I got a new starter on Sunday (5-13-2013) and have since re-started two cultures.

How has your luck held out on the second culture attempt?  I have some of these in my native waters and I'm trying them to see if they are suitable for first food.  I find them to be very hardy.

Well, my luck hasn't held out. I don't think it's because this is a particularly difficult species to culture, but because it often wasn't my most "needed" and therefore, if I was short on phyto, that was the culture that got neglected.  I have since expanded my phyto station and hope to get another starter of these guys.  Plus, I am hoping that they may be useful for my clingfish larvae, which makes me more dedicated to culturing them

Just got a new starter culture yesterday.  I will try to take some microscope shots tonight sometimes.  I was talking with the person I got them from and she said she usually aerates them pretty strongly.  Perhaps that's one of the things I wasn't doing the last times.

I've been culturing this since early September and for the most part neglect it except to make sure the water is a pretty dark green (considering it's a copepod culture).  This weekend it was time for a harvest since they have been doing quite well:

 
They mainly get tet, although sometimes it is Iso or Rhodo or Chaeto.  I took some to start a much larger culture (in a 10 gallon drum that I got from a friend, thanks Eric!) so we shall see how that goes.  I need to decide how I want to light/cover it so I don't have to worry too much about evap or the phyto dying.  These guys seem to do best when you keep the water tinted constantly and can get to pretty high densities, as the video shows.

I sieved some of these for feeding last night and decided to take a finger swipe from the sieve and put it on a slide and snapped a quick photo.  

 
Those were taken from the ~5 gallon culture.

I recently got some, too (probably from the same source as you did), and have also been neglecting them, except for making sure the water is tinted pretty darkly compared to Parvocalanus or Acartia, for example.  I'm treating them more like I would treat Apocyclops or Nitokra, and they seem to be doing well.

Yep, I feel like these do the best when I forget about them for days and days, if not longer. Then I will suddenly remember to check on them and the culture will very dense. I like that they tolerate over feeding (and seem to do better with the water constantly tinted) since it gives me more wiggle room.

Got more pictures today, and some are with a scale to get a better idea of sizes

Beautiful pictures.  Has anyone grown these on nanno or even chlorella?  Their food value would not be very high but if the cultures reproduced on the easier algaes you could always enrich them before feeding to larvae.   Here in the Chesapeake we have E. acutifrons in brackish water, and even at salinities very close to fresh water.  

They do well on tetraselmis which is easy to culture. I haven't tried nanno mainly because it generally isn't great for pods. I've tried chaetoceros, but they didn't seem to do well on that. So now they get Tet or Iso, or RG complete in a pinch (I'm not sure if they really eat the RGC or not since I haven't tried a culture exclusively on that).

They are relatively easy to culture and have nauplii that are on the smaller size, so they could potentially be a very useful copepod.