The best way to seed an aquarium or refuel your copepod population. Get 3 of the most common marine copepods in one bottle to help your reef aquaria take off again. We do recommend feeding live phytoplankton to your aquaria 2-4 times a week to help your copepods reproduce.
Tigriopus californicus will take 3-4 weeks before you start noticing a dramatic increase in population. If you are going to grow them we recommend waiting 5-6 weeks after receiving them and feeding them regularly before your first harvest, by this time your Tigriopus population should be doubled to tripled then harvesting every 2 weeks after that. Tigriopus californicus are loaded with omega-3 fatty acids making them ideal for picky eaters such as butterflies or mandarin gobys. These pods are known for their jerking motion that encourages fish to feed upon them. Females will lay hundreds of eggs during their lifecycle, if you use your phone to zoom in or a microscope you'll see females carrying eggs.
Tisbe copepods are small copepods that require a light to be shown at the bottom of the bottle to see them. We send all sizes/ages in each bottle. Tisbe copepods are a moderate production copepod, needing 2-3 weeks before harvesting. Tisbe pods will consume large amounts of phytoplankton while culturing, you'll often notice you'll have to feed them 4-5 times a week once your population takes off. They also make for a great clean up crew in your reef aquarium, they are bottom dwellers and love to hide in the rocks making them hard for small to medium fish to eat. (mandarins gobys love hunting these guys down) Tisbe copepods are loaded with high nutritional content when fed live phytoplankton.
Apocyclops copepods are medium size, slightly larger than tisbe and slightly smaller than Tigriopus copepods. Youll see these guys jerking in the water column, enticing smaller fish to eat. Apocyclops females will lay eggs every 4-6 days, meaning you can harvest them on a weekly basis if you're culturing them.
If you culture these pods together in a 1 gallon vessel or larger, eventually all the pods will be apocyclops as they reproduce at a faster rate.
Our copepod bottles are packed with pods, if you can't see your pods swimming around inside the bottle you are buying water. Check out our Instagram for pod density.
8 ounce pod bottle will seed a 30-50 gallon aquarium
16 ounce bottle will seed 60-120 gallons
32 ounce bottle will seed 120-220 gallons
64 ounce bottle will seed 230-400 gallons
