Culturing Freshwater Amphipods and Copepods

[Wy Renegade]

Anybody have any experience culturing these guys? Curious if the freshwater varieties can be kept together and/or if they need greenwater. I'm looking to get a culture started. I'll be using a 5 gallon tank set-up with a small layer of ADA soil and some driftwood. Several plants and Java moss for cover. Tank is in a window and is unheated.

 

[jetajockey]

I have some scuds going in one of my plant holding tanks. The biggest issue I've found with these kind of cultures is contamination. When the little copepods are allowed to thrive, other little critters will be thriving as well, like planarians, etc. Not that it's a huge deal, but they can be annoying.

 

[Wy Renegade]

Yes, in this case I have no issue with whatever thrives since the tank is strictly for culturing.

 

[Supergummy]

Following.

 

[jetajockey]

One other issue with culturing is it seems some species dominate in an enclosed setting. I don't think it's always necessary due to direct predation but better efficiency at reproducing/removing available food. I'm interested to see where you go with this project. I had some little worms come in with a shipment not long ago, they look just like earthworms (color/shape wise) but a scaled down size about 1- 1 1/2 long with the thickness of a needle. And they are fully aquatic.

 

[Wy Renegade]

Well, here is the set-up, sorry for the poor pictures, but pretty tough to get clear pictures in the window.





Added Amphipods, copepods, and Daphnia magna to get things started, about a 100 each of the copepods and the Daphnia magna and about 60 amphipods. Think they made a pretty good dent in the dying algae overnight - tank cleared up considerably after I added them.

 

[Wy Renegade]

Added hornwort plants to the tank, and so far the daphnia are thriving - lots of little ones swimming about. The Scuds have disappeared into the foliage and I only occasionally see one swimming about. Hopefully they will also start reproducing at some point.