Breeding Centropyge

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You sure got this thread off to a good start.  From my readings on anglefish, first food seems to be mostly handled with parvocalanus and oithona.  I recall that these copepods have naups in the 50 micron size range and adults in the 500 micron size range.  I'm not familiar with acartia sinjeinsis but most other acartia seem to have naups in the 80 micron range and thus are a little too large as first food for angels.
 
I think second food is the biggest hurdle right now.  I'm sure acartia naups would do fine as second food, other pods are also used.  Just as important as food size is escape response.  Naups tend to have weak jumping skills and are easily caught by angelfish larvae.  As the naup grows it's jumping ability increases and in a few days starts to exceed the pursuit ability of the angelfish.  So most breeders hit a starvation wall around 12 dph or so depending on culture temperatures.  There are several people who get through this starvation wall that have been mentioned in this forum, David Watson is one who has been reported to get angels to 20 days reliably.  But to my knowledge he isn't a contributor on any public forums, although my knowledge there is limited (in contrast, my ignorance is vast).  
 
Many people grow angels on wild caught copepods after the parvo naups get too fast to be caught.  I'm experimenting with some copepods local to the Chesapeake Bay estuary on the east coast of North America, but until I get my full system up and running I can't offer much insight into other pod species.
 
I stayed up way past my bedtime last night reading the paper on acartia sinjiensis (you probably never heard of the most successful beach volleyball player in U.S. history named Sinjin Smith, but every time I see sinjiensis my mind automatically reads it as "sinjinsmithius").  Sorry, that joke probably isn't funny to anyone but an ex-volleball player like me, my mind wanders at times.  But I think the PhD paper on acartia sinjinsmithius used equal parts of tetraselmis, isochrysis and pavlova.  I could be mistaken that those were the three correct algas and my spelling is probably also wrong.  But my point is that, at least in the case of pavlova, the phyto culture may be harder than the copepod culture.  Their reported yield of 8 million pods/day in a 266 liter culture is wonderful, let's see if we can become good enough to get that type of yield in our home systems.   I know everyone has limited space and water volume, my philosophy is to err on the side of caution and get a larger copepod culture system and more phyto than the academic results lead us to believe.
 
Then again, acartia tend to be very hardy copepods with great tolerance to salinity, temperature and food so we might be able to succeed after all.  Your use of the term "bioreactors" brings to mind a more complicated setup than the typical "I have a few soda bottles on a shelf".  That is good to hear.  A good hobbyist system I've seen is made by Florida Aqua Farms and uses a PVC frame to supply air and support disposable plastic bags.  But even this is more for batch systems than semi-continuous.  Some phytoreactors that look good are the tall clear polyethylene bags supported by cylinders of 2" (5cm) wire mesh.  My own attempt will be with polycarbonate sleeves, but I still need a few months to get around to that building project.  
 
Keep up the good research.  I think you are off to a great start.  
 

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As far as pod isolation, Luis a m probably has the best advice and most experience to draw from.
 
All I did was tape a filter bag on the end of a broomstick and swish it slowly through the water for 5 minutes, then turn it inside out in a half full 5 gallon bucket of water.  I did find it very helpful to pour the bucket contents into a shallow white plastic container, where the pods quickly concentrate in any corner where you aim a flashlight.  
 
The thing to be careful of is arrow worms (chaetnognaths is probably misspelled).  If you don't know about them already, they are long and thin like a skinny snake, so they are a relatively large animal that can get through very small screens.  They are present in the zooplankton everywhere in the world.  They are so particular about salinity that you can tell the water salinity just by seeing which specie of arrow worms is present.  They will create havoc in a larval system.   
 
Keeping them from a new copepod culture is relatively easy, just pull the wild pods out of a bright corner and put in a second dish and repeat the process, shining light in a far corner.  Pods are very attracted to light, arrow worms much less.
 
 

A couple more thoughts.  Yes, the biofuel industry has provided lots of cheap tools for larviculture.  They are the best.  Also, the bag method can be turned into a continuous reactor just like any other method.  You just need to drip clean F/2 water into the bag at the same rate which you drip greenwater out of it.  But I agree with you that fixed containers have many advantages over bags in that they are easier to support and plumb.  The plus side of bags is that although fragile, they are throwaway and you don't need to sterilize containers after contamination.  Plus you can cut off one end and use them as garbage bags.  
 
I jest, because like you I am working on a stiff sided container, but I may make a few bags just for comparison.  Many people also use translucent fiberglass or acrylic cylinders.  

Heh... Those vertical bag phytobioreactors are cute, but just that, cute.  

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only certain species allow cryo freezing unfortunately 

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That sounds so cool!  I've often wondered about lighting cultures from the inside but I never thought about using clear rods for light diffusion.  I've been waiting for high output underwater LEDs but it could be many years before they are cost effective.  Because I have a greenhouse I'm aiming for large thin sleeves in sunlight, perhaps with LEDs at night.  One way or another, I think LEDs are the future.
 
We must always think about sterilization between algae runs.  If it's too hard to sterilize it will keep getting contaminated.

The talk about cryofreezing and glycerol is waaay over my head.   It seems like an option for someone like Gresham who ships cultures, but a small user like me would just consume each day's production fresh on the spot for copepods.
 
I am biased because of my greenhouse situation.  For me, large sun based solutions are cheaper than high tech solutions.  Most breeders are probably in a situation more like you with indoor cultures, so your high tech approach would be more appropriate.  

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Two issues here....

1. they tend not to like non viable/frozen algae and prefer live - we sih this was not true, and we've got several trials running various versions to see if we can get a non live feed that will work well for copepods like Parvos
2. glycerol is a great fuel for bacteria

 
Its been over 10 years since we moved on from using glycerol so frankly I do not recall if we sold it that way.

We shipped metric tons of cryo preserved algae.  We know it can be done with quite a few species  It will be non-viable once thawed though.

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Just a heads up; you need to look into Karen Brittain's work...rather EXTENSIVE work.  Rising Tide posted some of her findings, she also blogs regularly here now - http://fromfisheggstofry.blogspot.com/ - CORAL Magazine just published an article on her breeding with Paracentropyge venusta.

Total number of marine angelfish reared to date is now around 26 IIRC. 
 
Also these:
http://www.rcthawaii.com/angel/1.htm
http://www.bluereefphoto....gel-centropyge-fisheri

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Some years ago when the world and I were younger I had occasion to visit friends at Scripps Ocenarium in southern California.  I really liked what they were using for cultures in one lab, originally for BBS then for phyto and feeding pods culture:
 
Basically inverted commercial five gallon water jugs, with bottoms removed, and a tap inserted into the neck and siliconed in.
 
Depending on what was reared they had different lighting, the BBS ones had 24 hr, and they worked through  a jug about daily and when it was done emptied, refilled and went on, they recycled all the water. After the BBs they set up another for phyto then put them inside a light cabinet. Pods were in other jugs. Each one had one or two airstones. When they wanted to harvest they would remove the airstones for 5-10 mins and open the taps and remove what they wanted. Some were strained and some not.
 
This was seen a bit over 20 years ago, and I have used it a number of times.  I am going to be setting up my next generation of this soon.  This is for mass culturing, on the bbs, phyto and pods  I will do smaller cultures to keep them purer and as working parent cultures.
 
The rack is a simple one with a board  with a hole drilled in to allow the tap through and the jug rests on the inverted shoulders of the jug and the board runs from the tops of the end boards. I ran a long bungie about halfway up the jugs just to steady them.  Its very simple. I am sure similar is to be found at other aquaculture operations.

Jake
We are all in this together

Why did Ryan delete all his posts?

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

NO clue.  Why do people do weird stuff like that, especially given all the help that was offered...