Aboulghasem

First of all you need to get copepods suitable for culturing. Strains that have already been cultured for a long time, e.g. at the lab at DTU-Aqua, Denmark, are probably best. You simply culture them in batches in , say, 50 liter tanks. Feed them algae like Rhodomonas or Tetraselmis. They are good quality. We have used a system where we filter the copepods through 200 and 50 µm to retreive adult/copepodites (200 µm) and eggs/nauplii (50 µm) at regular intervals. New tanks can then be inoculated with the eggs/nauplii. You want to do that if you want to have a supply of adults at a known age for egg production measurments etc. later on. But the real crux is the culturing of algae. That's a whole handicraft in itself. Let me know if there is anything specific you want to know. I have cultured At for a very long time.

Nancy H. Marcus and Jeffrey A. Wilcox (2007) A GUIDE TO THE MESO-SCALE PRODUCTION OF THE COPEPOD ACARTIA TONSA.

Dear Peter & leonid

Thanks for your good advices. Actually I started to culture A. tonsa that I gathered from the Caspian Sea with Chlorella sp. feeding, but it was not succeeded as I am armature in this field. I mean like to know more the apparatus and to receive photos and illustrations of copepods culture labs.

I've found that they do very well on a food mixture, rather than on a single food alone. We feed Isochrysis, Rhodomonas, and Heterocapsa when we culture copepods. The earlier naupliar stages like the smaller foods, but the older nauplii, copepodites, and adults do well w/ the addition of the Heterocapsa or some other dinoflagellate (10-20 um). The largest batch cultures that we raised were in 10L polycarbonate carboys...we grew them in a 20 C controlled growth room with a 12:12 light/dark cycle. Good luck!

Thanks indeed Cammie

Does anybody have this paper? Corkett, C.J. (1967) Technique for rearing marine calanoid copepods in laboratory conditions. Nature, Lond. 216: pp. 58-59

Paper of  Corkett

Thanks Leonid