LIVE Apex-Pods FAQ

While our Tigger-Pods make a great live food source for your pod eaters, they commonly don’t populate a tank. However, our live Apex-Pods (Apocyclops panamensis) are the best choice for long term population. These copepods reproduce rapidly and have a small size. Once in the tank, they are usually there forever.

We typically pack about 2,000 adults and juveniles per bottle which is a great starter for your aquarium or culture.

Approximately 2,000. Each bottle contains females with eggs, mature males and a variety of juvenile stages.

If you bought them from an local fish store (LFS), throw away the bottle and contact them. If they were purchased directly from Reef Nutrition, please contact us and we will send out replacement product, free of charge, as soon as we can.

We recommend 1 bottle of live copepods per 25 gallons.

Yes. With the cap popped open, let the bottle stand at room temp for about 2 hours to allow the temperature to rise. Salinity acclimation is not necessary.

The copepods can be poured directly into your refugium and/or main tank. When dosing your display, we recommend that you add the pods after lights out so that they can settle into the rock and substrate before being consumed by predatory fish. Turn off all pumps, add the copepods and wait 30 minutes before returning your system to normal function. Since some of the copepods will cling to the side of the bottle after pouring, make sure to rinse the remainders out with clean saltwater so that you get every animal. When adding to a refugium, just pour them whether the light is on or not.

We are not certain how different medications affect copepods. It’s best to avoid adding them to any system under medication.

Copepods do best when there is ample substrate and rock. Rock, whether artificial or natural, that is highly porous is ideal. Copepods will also populate in macro algae like Chaetomorpha sp. The larger the tank and the more habitat you can offer them, the better chance they have for survival, especially when there are zooplankton predators in the tank.

Most fish and corals will consume copepods. Commonly, hobbyists add copepods to feed to animals that require live feed organisms such as mandarin dragonets and Syngnathids (seahorse, pipefish, etc.). Wrasses also tend to pick at surfaces to eat copepods and other zooplankton.

We recommend that you add them to your sump and display.

We recommend that you add them to your refugium and display.

This depends on the size of the tank. If you have a system under 55 gallons, we recommend adding pods at least once a month. If your system is over 55 gallons, we recommend adding pods once every 3 months.

We recommend you add copepods when brown algae starts to grow on the glass and substrate. Adding them at this time ensures that they have microalgae to consume in between phyto feedings.

We do recommend that you feed Phyto-Feast to the pods, but in very small doses (ex. ¼ TSP per 100 gallons per day). You can increase the phyto feeding amounts as you begin to add corals and filter-feeders.

If you have a refugium, make sure to get the pods in there, as well. You can split the pods between the refugium and the display.