Florida Bay and copepods - Martin Moe do you have a boat?

[Louis Z]

Martin just wondering if you have a boat and able to access Florida Bay or similar Bay close to it? http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/flbay/clarke.html

 

[Martin Moe]

Yes I do. It's a small 13 foot Boston Whaler with a 40 hp Mariner engine. Unfortunately, the motor at this time is not running very well. I have to get it fixed or explore the mysteries of carborator cleaning and repair myself. Both options require some partition of time and money, neither or which I have a lot of at this point. It works very well (when its working) as a plankton puller so one of these days I'll have to fix it.

 

[Anonymous]

Darn, otherwise I would suggest finding yourself one galleon, who happens to pay his way through school as a boat mechanic. I miss my little Chrysler, but I'd take a Whaler ANY day of the week over the Hydro-vee.

 

[Louis Z]

In the above linked abstract, Parvocalanus crassirostris is mentioned to be in Florida Bay. This is one of those copepods that have nauplii which remain under 100 microns for more than two days. They consume most of the widely used phyto strains. The parvocalanus sp was talked about at the OI copepod '03 workshop. A research paper from AIMS (Australia) came out describing life history and culture techniques. Any interest?

 

[Martin Moe]

This is a very interesting study by Elizabeth Clarke. I remember touring her rotifer and phytoplankton labs a while back. It points out very well that the culture of promising larval food organisms is just beginning. I think that there is more to the situation than just successful culture, however. When we were working with the large angels i the late 70s, it became evident very quickly that rotifers, for whatever reason, just were not on the menu for larval angelfish. So we turned to wild plankton, mostly copepods. When this was successful we tried to culture copepods in large outdoor tanks. And this was also successful. The tanks were 30 feet long, 15 feet wide and 20 inches deep. A good green water culture was easy to develop and the copepods were abundant. The only fly in the ointment was that the larval angels would consume the copepod napuli and copopodites but, for whatever reason, would not survive at that time under the existing conditions. Larva from the same hatch, however, would suvive on wild plankton. So there may be some problems that must be corrected in culture systems for copepods and other organisms to produce a food organism that not only has the proper size and behavior, but also has the nutritional and "nontoxic" characteristics to allow survival of the larvae. Syd Kraul also had problems along these lines and found that he had to sterilize and restart his copepod cultures every 3 days to produce a food organism that would allow survival. So if one is interested in production over research, then wild plankton is the way to go.

 

[Louis Z]

Martin, how long did the larvae survive with the cultured copepods/green water? Did they last more than a week? Was the cultured copepod concentration the same as when wild plankton was added? I am assuming the wild plankton concentration was greater than what could have been grown in the ponds.

 

[Martin Moe]

Louis, The angelfish larvae survived only a few days after first feeding began, as I recall, maybe 3 days or so. We did have quite a large quantity of cultured copepods, we had two of these large tanks. We did have to seive out the adults and replace them in the tanks to maintain the populations. The levels of food organisms were about the same in the cultured copepod tanks as in the wild plankton tanks. One of the advantages of the wild plankton was that we could collect all we needed as we needed it. Providing that the weather was right, the sediment load in the water was not too great, and the diatoms were not in bloom. For a small fish production system, I think wild plankton is adequate and less expense, time and effort than large scale copepod culture, but it would be hard to base a large scale fish farm on wild plankton collection. At least it would take a lot of technical development to get a system in place that would produce that many food organisms.

 

[Louis Z]

Thanks Martin. Your experience is very helpful. Unfortunately I am inland and can not rely upon wild plankton thus my quest for cultured copepods.