Culture Journal, Species: Tigriopus californicus

General
Species:  Tigriopus californicus
Species description:  Harpacticoid copepod
Culture source (link if possible):  I bought them at my LFS, but can't remember from what company
If algae, CCMP # (Optional): 
http://ccmp.bigelow.edu/
Culture Establishment Date:  1-22-2014 (I've actually had this culture for 9 months or maybe a year...)
Continuation Date:  4-23-2014

Culturing Vessel Details
Salinity:  ~1.024
Temperature:    Room temperature.  Varies from 68-84 based on the time of the year
pH:  Not measured

Vessel description:  ~4L clear plastic containers at first for a long time, now use clear plastic shoeboxes 
Lighting description:  Ambient light from nearby fluorescent strip light and southern facing window
Lighting cycle:  sunrise to sunset, supplemented by fluorescent strip light until 9PM 
Aeration description:  None

Methodologies
Split methodology: When the population looks dense enough I harvest by siphoning them out, then replace the water I removed with sterilized ASW (1/2mL per liter bleach sterilized, 1 1/2mL per L of 1M sodium thiosulfate neutralized)

Culture medium description: 
The culture is kept continually green/brown with live phyto, often pretty "dark."  I use motile algae that seem to settle less (Tetraselmis or Isochrysis) and usually only need to add phyto once or twice over a month or after water change/harvest.         

Cell count:
 (if known)

Reference links:  

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



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Some recent culture pics (taken last week)


 
I will try to remember to throw them under the scope sometime soon.  I take such little care of these guys I often forget I even have them...

Finally got around to taking some microscope pics:


 
Now I have these in plastic shoe boxes that I stack three high.  There are air holes drilled toward the top and a hole drilled in the lid (so I can add in food or water or anything else needed)

Continuation pics:


 
I will try to remember to put them under the scope again as well.
 
Maintenance continues to be simple for me.  I add in phyto after I change out the water or do a large harvest (usually once a month-ish) and that addition of live phyto maintains until the next water change.  I haven't fed any larger food items (like crushed flake or pellet) but would imagine it could help quite a bit in getting the population numbers higher.  There is phytoplankton detritus on the bottom though and I would imagine they eat that.

Shannon, paint the sides of the containers.

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

I'm actually thinking about scaling these up to gray 2.5 gallon buckets, or perhaps even 5 gallon buckets.  The only downside is that right now, with the clear containers, the phyto maintains itself with ambient window light, but if I scale up to dark-side containers I will have to light from the top.  Not a huge deal, but...

They don't care much about light.  Mine are in painted tubs and just get ambient light.  I'm harvesting thousands per week.

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

I know the pods don't care...but the phyto I feed to them once a month that maintains itself does.  The phyto is the issue.  I can be lazy if the phyto maintains itself and I like that

Ok, so you're not wanting to produce big numbers?

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

I don't really need to at the moment.  Eventually I may want to (and perhaps soon-ish) since they will probably be good for dottyback rearing as a substitute for bbs, but then again Arctodiaptomus pods are completely pelagic and would likely be even better.  Oh, I just don't know!  
 
I do wonder if the dark sided containers would work better for other benthic species like Tisbe though, so it's something to keep in mind since I plan to set up Tisbe cultures where the goal will be to get lots of nauplii.  How much would you say your numbers increased when you switched containers?  Did you go from harvesting once a month to once a week or something crazy like that?

 
Actually, yes.  The painted containers are about 6-8x more dense than unpainted containers.  I haven't tried white yet, but they very much prefer black over blue.  I went from light harvesting once every 3 weeks to heavy harvesting once every week.

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

Wow, I did not know this - this is why we read things on the MBI - never would have thought to paint the outside of a pod container to increase harvest rates!

Gresham has posted about it before. Related to a flight response ( and I assume stress) while using clear containers if I recall.