When you’re looking to buy copepods on line make sure you find a supplier that has a variety of many types of copepods available to choose from.
Copepods come in many varieties and types.
Calanoid (free swimming) spend most of their time filter feeding in the water column.
Harpacticoid (Bottom dwelling) spend most of their time walking on substrate, like rocks and sand.
Fish have evolved different feeding strategies of survival by taking advantage of these different characteristics in the copepods’ behavior.
You will notice that fish like Mandarin, Dragonets, seahorses, pigmy angelfish will eat mostly the bottom dwelling copepods. While other fish like Wrasse, Anthias, Damsels, Gobies, Jaw fish, Chromis and Corals etc.. Eat free swimming copepods.
When you’re looking to buy copepods on line make sure you find a supplier that has a variety of many types of copepods available to choose from.
Some copepod types commonly cultured are Acartia, Tisbe, Pseudo, Parvo, and Tigger Pods. Some places have a mix of the different types of live copepods all included in one portion like “Reef Soup.”“Reef Soup,” a Copepod mix, is a very convenient and affordable solution for a constant supply of live copepods if you’re keeping a reef and fish aquarium.
We recommend adding live copepods once or twice a month to your tank. This will ensure that you have a constant replenishing of your breeding colony and also available prey animal for your fish and corals. Over time, fish and corals can easily deplete a population of copepods in an aquarium because an aquarium tankis an enclosed system. Fish and other marine life are constantly preying on the copepod population faster than they can reproduce.
A recommendation for one of the best food for copepods is PhytoPreme Live.