Culturing copepods for dwarf seahorses?

[Kathryn Lawson]

Hi! I've been trying to research dwarf seahorses, and have consistently read that the #1 reason people don't keep them long-term is because they need live baby brine shrimp, and they get tired of daily hatches and the need to enrich them. However, I've also been looking into mandarin dragonets, and have seen that some folks culture their own copepods to keep them fed. Is there any reason this wouldn't work for dwarf seahorses? From what I've found, copepods are more nutritious than baby brine shrimp, and are the seahorses' natural food. So why is it not common to culture copepods to feed them? The only explanation I've found thus far was on a forum where someone suggested that they might need to eat more copepods than can be easily cultured at a home scale, but this sounds off to me - mandarin dragonets are way bigger, and it sounds relatively common to culture copepods to feed them. Any thoughts? Thanks in advance!

[lynn.reef.nerd]

I don't know anything about seahorse but a couple of things come to mind:

 

1. Easier to hatch brine shrimp (24-48 hours) versus the lifecycle of pods ~ 7-15 days (??)

2. Brine shrimp you can purchase eggs at very cheap price and store for longer period of time. Pods has to be purchase live.

3. Hatched brine can be fed and hatching can continue daily/every other day. Pods requires phyto or a separate food source that you have to maintain and feed on a regular basis to continue population. 

4. Brine easy to hatch and doesn't require a lot of equipment. Pods you need a way to maintain the population and prevent build up of amonia (water changes ... etc.)

[Kathryn Lawson]

That does make sense, thanks! I have a background in microbiology, both in sterile and open/mixed cultures (grew chlorella sp. on landfill leachate and cow manure in a research lab at one point), so I guess I'm a bit more casual when it comes to setting up culture systems. Maybe I'm underestimating the amount of work to keep open cultures of copepods and phyto going without crashing, but to me it seems like it'll be way, way easier to spend some time planning and setting up one/multiple phyto cultures with a doser/drip feed into a copepod culture (with sponge filter for ammonia control), that in turn feeds into the dwarf seahorse tank (and thus doesn't require daily maintenance), rather than hatching and rinsing and enriching brine shrimp on a daily basis!

[lynn.reef.nerd]

Not sure. Do what makes sense to you. Never hurt to try and find out. Sometimes the best way is to try it versus reading about it and trusting someone else's opinion. 

 

don't forget to document your work here so we can all learn.  

[YHSublime]

Alyssa (who used to work at Pacific East Aquaculture I believe) was once (and looks like still is) a wealth of knowledge on seahorses. 

[Salty Rambler]

5 hours ago, YHSublime said:

Alyssa (who used to work at Pacific East Aquaculture I believe) was once (and looks like still is) a wealth of knowledge on seahorses. 

 

+1 for Alyssa as a good resource. She is MASNA's 2022 Aquarist of the Year for her work related to seahorses and is interested in sharing what she has learned over the years.

 

https://masna.org/masna-programs/aquarist-of-the-year/

[DaJMasta]

This is my setup for copepods and phyto:

 

Takes a bit to get going, certainly, but this rack produces quite a bit - almost 1L a day directly into the tanks and ~1.5 gallons of copepod cultures, which is likely enough to sustain a couple of adult mandarins or several seahorses on them alone (though some ponies are much bigger than mandarins, and it seems many are able to be trained onto mysis for at least a portion of their diet).

My basic setup is 5x 2 gallon culture vessels for copepods and 11 one gallon cultures for phyto, each shelf is started offset by half, so I harvest usually twice a week, 3-4 days apart.  Copepods are harvested every day, and I train 1/10th to 1/8th of the vessel and then refill it completely with a grown out phyto culture.  I've emphasized variety to try and support as many organisms as possible and to get a feel for growing different things (the red porphyridium was added a month or so ago, the empty looking one is actually pyrocystis dinoflagellates that are bioluminescent!), and I've got 3 jugs of apocyclops (nearly bulletproof, high production cultures that can eat pure phyto, don't really need water/vessel changes, and are pelagic), and then one each of tisbe and tigriopus.  I'd like another swimmer (probably to replace an apocyclops), likely acartia if I can get them, and have tried parvocalanus and pseudodiaptomus with less than ideal results.  Everything's plumbed to a single linear air pump, and each jug has a hard airline to bubble it in and keep things circulating (though it's on low in the two benthic copepod cultures)

For daily harvesting, the setup takes maybe 5 minutes, and I drain them through sieves (in my case, 4 cup measures with a side cut out for a suitable sorting mesh), but twice a week it's closer to half an hour plus initially making the saltwater to make sure the salinity is right, harvest the jugs, and restart all of them with new fertilizer, water, vessel, etc. (I move something like 1/6th of the original culture to a new vessel and harvest the rest).

You will run into crashes and it is extra work, but getting daily live phyto and pods is not crazy work.  Once you have a rhythm and workflow, it can be annoying when put off, but it's very manageable, and it can be much simpler than this if you, for example, go with one kind of phyto and copepod.

[AlanM]

This is so cool.  I think it would be great to have your experiences both raising larvae and culturing pods and phyto for one of the WAMAS meeting talks.

[SkiCurtis]

Yes, this would be a great idea!

 

[Kathryn Lawson]

Thank you all! This is fantastic information, and I third(?) the call for DaJMasta to present at a WAMAS meeting - super cool setup to support your other awesome projects!! DaJMasta, are the bioluminescent dinos for "fun", or are they good feed organisms also??

I did reach out to Alyssa at Seahorse Savvy, and her response is posted below, for anyone in the future who might have a similar question:

"Thank you for reaching out. You can feed them copepods. Some of our customers are culturing the Apocyclops panamensis pods for them. We are just using enriched Artemia nauplii here. They need to eat a lot and it is easier in our experience to feed them enriched baby brine shrimp in the numbers we need and even a herd of 10-12+ seahorses. You might find doing the pods for you easier with your experience though. We are using the enriched Artemia nauplii with all of our Dwarf seahorses and seahorse fry and it is plenty nutritious for them when properly enriched. Please let us know if you have any other questions. We look forward to hearing from you."

[DaJMasta]

Thanks for the votes of confidence, but I think it's just barely getting to a year and a half of experience, so while I tend to dive into things and have figured out a lot, I think there's plenty of room for growth yet.

There have been some good talks on this topic at MACNAs, though, and there is some good information on algae culturing and copepod culturing from some of the vendors.  For text info, there's stuff from algae research supply and reed mariculture for a number of species, and then on youtube there's:

 

A portion of this one is about culturing and sterilization:

 

And this was really my starting point for developing home techniques for algae, copepods, and the process behind raising larvae (also very DIY oriented, great for tools):

 

[Kathryn Lawson]

Awesome, thanks for the links/references!

[Aquastudent]

DaJMasta - That is an incredible looking set-up. Thank you for sharing! This is exactly what I was looking for for inspiration.