Reef By Steele
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If you have been in this hobby for a long time, like me, you probably remember the days before the internet. Back then, especially if you lived in the middle of Nebraska, gaining information was a challenge. There were a few good books, but of course our library didn’t carry them so it was a 200-300 mile drive East or West to get to Omaha or Denver to get to good LFS’s. Back then you would go to Three different LFS and ask the same question and get 3 different answers, now you can get the same results sitting on the couch typing the question into your phone.
At that time, although expensive, live rock straight from the ocean was readily available and along with it came all kinds of life. Just like today, some good, and some bad. The good were the copepods and amphipods. Back then, I I didn’t even know they existed. The first time I found amphipods, they really freaked me out. Looking like some flea from out of a Star Wars Movie bouncing around and zigzagging through the tank.
A small store in Lincoln Nebraska had a green mandarin just floating above the rocks and I just had to have one. I was told my tank would need copious amounts of live rock and be about a year old. I waited it out and still I was unable to keep one alive.
Today copepods are readily available with just the click of a button. I believe this is a major improvement for our hobby. Now you can add a mandarin to your aquarium as soon as your tank has cycled, at least I did. I would recommend this for more experienced aquarists. I did a fish in cycle over a month, and “Rainbow Wish” was the 4th or 5th fish added. But this time I knew about Copepods, and added a large order of Tisbe, Tigriopus, Apocyclops and Amphipods to seed the tank and periodically added more and 2 years later he is gorgeous and beautiful.
And there were other hidden benefits as well. I started the Red Sea XL 525 and a 350 at the same time and amazingly I didn’t suffer from the “Ugly Phase” in either tank, I had split the Pods between both tanks. At the time I thought I must just be lucky as I remembered my first saltwater tanks and was prepared for the worst.
Yet when I started my third tank, an XXL750, I planned this tank to be for larger predators so I did not add pods as I knew I wouldn’t have any of the usual pod hunters in the tank. And a year or so later I upgraded the XL525 to an S1000 moving everything from the XL525 except the sand bed. Again I avoided the ugly phase in the S1000, but GHA took over the XL525 that I had reloaded with ”wet” rock from my LFS and I was in an ongoing battle with turf algae in the XXL750, man oh man what did I do wrong this time? I was using the same salts and maintenance routine, everything was the same, yet the outcome was different. It wasn’t until much later that I remembered that I had stocked both of the first two tanks with Amphipods and a blend of copepods. I continued to fight both of those tanks until we were at the LFS and my wife @Ocean_Queenie fell in love with a target Mandarin as one of its targets was shape like a paisley, which is what she promptly named it, at which time I ordered another round of pods (yes my loving wife would say quite regularly “Are there enough pods for paisley?, to which I would respond, “I don’t know, I will get some on order”. And whether it was just the passage of time or the addition of pods, the struggle in the XL525 subsided, even though I was still learning and honestly doing a terrible job of controlling my nutrients, I no longer had a GHA problem, yet the turf algae war continued in the XXL750.
I really blamed this on the fact that I bought pre used dry rock (as I did with the original XL525 setup as the LFS had gotten a lot of Tonga rock in that had been in someone’s garage for years) but this rock was not ocean rock and had been used in a freshwater system. You can find all my challenges under my personal threads as @HankstankXXL750. Fast forward to April a year ago when I got on the wrasse lovers thread and decided to purchase Anampses meleagrides, Macropharyngodon meleagris, and Macropharyngodon bipartitus and knew then I would need a lot more pods, so I reached out to a fellow reefer here on R2R and he helped me to get started culturing my own and I started doing research.
This is when I learned about the “curing” benefits of PODS both copepods and amphipods. These benefits include nutrient export by consuming bacteria, detritus and uneaten food and converting it to protein and fatty acids for our fish. Algae control at it’s finest as pods are so small they can get into the tiniest of crevices and clean the algae down to its roots. Copepods aid in the husbandry of certain aquarium inhabitants like our beloved Rainbow Wish and Paisley and we can’t ignore HUSKER our Ruby Red Dragonet (Can’t live in the Cornhusker state and have a red and yellow fish and not name it after your team lol) plus pipefish, seahorses, wrasses, anthias, and food for many different captive bred fry. Plus as an added bonus almost if not all of your fish in your aquarium as they munch on these protein and fatty acid enriched treats.
So now I have fat and healthy Pod hunters, mostly algae free tanks (fighting something in the S1000 since I zeroed NO3 and PO4, and yes I have a microscope, but with my culturing, I haven’t taken the time to look) and am achieving better nutrient values dosing phytoplankton without relying on NO-Pox and Lanthanum chloride. And it’s fun to watch them on the glass.
With the introduction of our wrasses we researched and learned more and more about the copepods and which copepods are the best for the different types of “pod hunters”. That is when we added three pelagic species to our mix, Acartia, Pseudo, and Parvo pods, as they are better for the cruising hunters like leopard wrasses and anthias as they freely swim through the water column. Recognizing the different needs of different fish, we have taken the time this week to add new blends allowing customers to get the best copepods to match the needs of their tanks.
Join us in discussion and share your thoughts and experiences about your successes and failures as we continue this frustrating and rewarding hobby that I can now not live without. Happy and Joyous Reefing one and all from www.reefbysteele.com
At that time, although expensive, live rock straight from the ocean was readily available and along with it came all kinds of life. Just like today, some good, and some bad. The good were the copepods and amphipods. Back then, I I didn’t even know they existed. The first time I found amphipods, they really freaked me out. Looking like some flea from out of a Star Wars Movie bouncing around and zigzagging through the tank.
A small store in Lincoln Nebraska had a green mandarin just floating above the rocks and I just had to have one. I was told my tank would need copious amounts of live rock and be about a year old. I waited it out and still I was unable to keep one alive.
Today copepods are readily available with just the click of a button. I believe this is a major improvement for our hobby. Now you can add a mandarin to your aquarium as soon as your tank has cycled, at least I did. I would recommend this for more experienced aquarists. I did a fish in cycle over a month, and “Rainbow Wish” was the 4th or 5th fish added. But this time I knew about Copepods, and added a large order of Tisbe, Tigriopus, Apocyclops and Amphipods to seed the tank and periodically added more and 2 years later he is gorgeous and beautiful.
And there were other hidden benefits as well. I started the Red Sea XL 525 and a 350 at the same time and amazingly I didn’t suffer from the “Ugly Phase” in either tank, I had split the Pods between both tanks. At the time I thought I must just be lucky as I remembered my first saltwater tanks and was prepared for the worst.
Yet when I started my third tank, an XXL750, I planned this tank to be for larger predators so I did not add pods as I knew I wouldn’t have any of the usual pod hunters in the tank. And a year or so later I upgraded the XL525 to an S1000 moving everything from the XL525 except the sand bed. Again I avoided the ugly phase in the S1000, but GHA took over the XL525 that I had reloaded with ”wet” rock from my LFS and I was in an ongoing battle with turf algae in the XXL750, man oh man what did I do wrong this time? I was using the same salts and maintenance routine, everything was the same, yet the outcome was different. It wasn’t until much later that I remembered that I had stocked both of the first two tanks with Amphipods and a blend of copepods. I continued to fight both of those tanks until we were at the LFS and my wife @Ocean_Queenie fell in love with a target Mandarin as one of its targets was shape like a paisley, which is what she promptly named it, at which time I ordered another round of pods (yes my loving wife would say quite regularly “Are there enough pods for paisley?, to which I would respond, “I don’t know, I will get some on order”. And whether it was just the passage of time or the addition of pods, the struggle in the XL525 subsided, even though I was still learning and honestly doing a terrible job of controlling my nutrients, I no longer had a GHA problem, yet the turf algae war continued in the XXL750.
I really blamed this on the fact that I bought pre used dry rock (as I did with the original XL525 setup as the LFS had gotten a lot of Tonga rock in that had been in someone’s garage for years) but this rock was not ocean rock and had been used in a freshwater system. You can find all my challenges under my personal threads as @HankstankXXL750. Fast forward to April a year ago when I got on the wrasse lovers thread and decided to purchase Anampses meleagrides, Macropharyngodon meleagris, and Macropharyngodon bipartitus and knew then I would need a lot more pods, so I reached out to a fellow reefer here on R2R and he helped me to get started culturing my own and I started doing research.
This is when I learned about the “curing” benefits of PODS both copepods and amphipods. These benefits include nutrient export by consuming bacteria, detritus and uneaten food and converting it to protein and fatty acids for our fish. Algae control at it’s finest as pods are so small they can get into the tiniest of crevices and clean the algae down to its roots. Copepods aid in the husbandry of certain aquarium inhabitants like our beloved Rainbow Wish and Paisley and we can’t ignore HUSKER our Ruby Red Dragonet (Can’t live in the Cornhusker state and have a red and yellow fish and not name it after your team lol) plus pipefish, seahorses, wrasses, anthias, and food for many different captive bred fry. Plus as an added bonus almost if not all of your fish in your aquarium as they munch on these protein and fatty acid enriched treats.
So now I have fat and healthy Pod hunters, mostly algae free tanks (fighting something in the S1000 since I zeroed NO3 and PO4, and yes I have a microscope, but with my culturing, I haven’t taken the time to look) and am achieving better nutrient values dosing phytoplankton without relying on NO-Pox and Lanthanum chloride. And it’s fun to watch them on the glass.
With the introduction of our wrasses we researched and learned more and more about the copepods and which copepods are the best for the different types of “pod hunters”. That is when we added three pelagic species to our mix, Acartia, Pseudo, and Parvo pods, as they are better for the cruising hunters like leopard wrasses and anthias as they freely swim through the water column. Recognizing the different needs of different fish, we have taken the time this week to add new blends allowing customers to get the best copepods to match the needs of their tanks.
Join us in discussion and share your thoughts and experiences about your successes and failures as we continue this frustrating and rewarding hobby that I can now not live without. Happy and Joyous Reefing one and all from www.reefbysteele.com
