matt_longview

although far from scientific you my find this useful http://reviews.ebay.com/Copepods-Car...ARCH:2&afsrc=1

Thanks for the little article. That's the same basic info I've been finding as well.

The article says no light is needed... would putting it in the sunlight help algae growth and therefore help give some natural food, or would it not matter to put it anywhere I wanted?

Hello Matt if you look our pictures........".Our latest reef" you will see the pod factory that we built.It is a simple 5 gallon bucket with two bulkheads one to supply water from the manifold of our pump the other just drains into the sump.we put in six inches of clean marine sand and a hand full of macro algae and its producing pods at an amazing rate.We have a scooter blennie and he picks pods of the rock work constantly.We installed the supply line about two inches above the sand bed with a elbow pointing to the surface for good gas exchange and the drain is about 2 inches from the top of the bucket.we are using a cheapo clip on light fixture with a 5100k CFL and we are harvesting a ball of macro every 3 weeks about the size of a baseball.wish i had used a 20 gallon barrel.We a pushing roughly a 120 to 150 gallons per hour through are pod factory.good luck happy pods to you........

matthew

Sounds a lot like a refugium to me. Setting up a predator-free zone is the best way to breed pods. Well-fed pods will breed and their babies will flow up into the display as live food. You can also make pod-piles in your tank, such as using a pile of small rocks inside an upside-down strawberry basket. The pods breed and the fish can't get in to decimate the population, but can still pick off some morsels that get to close to the edge of the basket.

I have a refugium and rock rubble in the tank. I'm wanting to do more outside of the tank... I've got more phyto than I could ever feed to my tank, and I cut back half of my chaeto every couple of weeks. I just see that chaeto being thrown out and I think " Man... I wish I didn't have to throw away the pods that are in this!". When you have a mandarin in a nano... even if it is eating frozen... you want to get as many pods into the tank as possible. Do you guys think I'm wasting my time if I already have rock rubble and a refugium in my tank?

No, I'm not suggesting that. If you want to set up a secondary system to grow them out, go for it. Document it. Share it with us. We'd love to follow along!

melev - Today 01:03 PM
Sounds a lot like a refugium to me.

.Well it is refugium the thing i really like about our little bucket fuge is that with one of our spare power heads or little pumps its portable from tank to tank very easy to move oh yeah.I think i'll call it" pods across America" lol. Kind of surprised Marc did not pick up on the portability issue of our system.Did we slip one past the master.lol

matt_longview - Today 01:07 PM

I have a refugium and rock rubble in the tank. I'm wanting to do more outside of the tank... I've got more phyto than I could ever feed to my tank, and I cut back half of my chaeto every couple of weeks. I just see that chaeto being thrown out and I think " Man... I wish I didn't have to throw away the pods that are in this!". When you have a mandarin in a nano... even if it is eating frozen... you want to get as many pods into the tank as possible. Do you guys think I'm wasting my time if I already have rock rubble and a refugium in my tank?

Hello when i harvest my macro i put about two gallons of system water in a bucket.And try to spread out the macro and kinda shake out some of the life in it then toss the macro and dump the water back into my sump.always seem to get a bunch of all different size creatures left in the bucket to return to our reef.
happy tanks to ya