Cyclops and larvae

[jesper]

I started out this thread to see how many has had bad experiences good experiences of feeding cyclops(copepod max. 3mm in size!) cyclops to larvae.

I have fed cyclops to orientalis larvae for three days now without any ill effects other than the larvae is getting fat. In the beginning the larvae didn't react fast enough to catch the cyclops, which are pretty fast. The larvae were used to the smaller and slower artemia. It took a day or so for the larvae to adjust, now they catch them easily.

It's quite fun to watch the larvae dragging their body along with their front feet trying to position themselves in the middle of a cyclops gang then ambushing them. Sometimes they stalk a single cyclops but ambush is more usual.
Also as the cyclops are bigger than artemia, they don't have to spend as much energy per meal.
The cyclops range in size from about BBS size of 500µm to 3mm, I don't know if the size difference is because I have different species or different maturity levels(probably a mix...). Nonetheless, the larvae eat them all.

It should be noted that the larvae is Cynops orientalis and the last of the bunch(15) lost their yolk sacs just a couple of days ago(They hatched 7-14 days ago).

 

[alan]

How do you know they are Cyclops?
What species are they?
Do you mean copepod?

 

[jesper]

Hi Alan,
I guess I've fallen victim to calling all small copepods cyclops, sorry about that. I should refer to them as various species of copepods in the size range of 0,5-3mm. I have checked them out under a microscope but that didn't do me much good.

(Message edited by Jesper on November 09, 2004)

 

[wyatt]

If you mean Triops, do not feed these. these animals will get an inch long and eat your pets.

 

[jesper]

Superkingdom: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Subkingdom: Metazoa
Phylum: Arthropoda
Subphylum/Class: Crustacea
Class/Subclass: Copepoda
Order:Cyclopoida
Family: Cyclopidae
Genera: Cyclops
species: bicuspidatus

This is a Cyclops species.

You see the Class/Subclass? It says Copepoda, the genera that you are referring to belongs to a different Class/Subclass called Branchiopoda.
Branchiopods are totally different from Copepods.

 

[jesper]

I've fed my larvae almost exclusively on cyclops now, no problems thus far. Larvae seem quite happy. However, I have observed the bigger copepods being aggressive towards the larvae. They dash forward and nib at the gills. These copepods are huge and very few, I usually kill them. Since they are so few and so big(daphnia size) it is easy and not time consuming to pick them off. If you supply an alternative food source, I dont think they will harass the larvae.

 

[jacob]

I used cyclops for several weeks last year to feed my larval axolotls because all of the bigger daphnia cultures were recovering from a "mass crash", and they worked just fine. I now always make sure to have decent sized cultures of cyclops for backup.