4) Add nutrients to the sterile seawater. Our "F/2" nutrient stocks (Guillard, 1975) are made up at 500 times final concentration. Thus, 2 ml of nutrient should be added to each litre of sterile seawater. Nutrients are kept in a plastic bottle in the refrigerator. Normally, 2L bottles get 4 ml of F/2; 100L buckets get 200 ml of F/2, etc.

Stockly's Method: Put 2 level tablespoons Miracid in 300ml tap water. Store this in any clean, capped plastic bottle at room temperature. Use 1ml of this blue solution for every liter of algae for dense TE growth. This is "F/1" strength, and works very well with outdoor Tetraselmis in partial shade.

5) Add algae inoculant. It is best to check microscopically and record cell counts and health occasionally. You can usually tell by color if a 2L culture is healthy and dense enough to use as inoculant for 100, 200, or 600L cultures. Note the date, inoculant source, inoculant quantity, and algal species on a piece of tape (or directly on glass bottles) whenever a new culture is started. This procedure will help you to determine how well a culture is doing, and is good for inventory control.

Copepods:

The harpacticoid copepod, Euterpina acutifrons, is a nearly ideal food for larval marine fishes due to its size, trophic ecology, nutritional value, culturability, and (most importantly) acceptability by pelagic marine fish larvae. There are few literature references to successful copepod culture. Suggested readings include Theilacker and Kimball (1984); and Zurlini et aL (1978). Culture techniques are easy, using the following suggestions.

1) Do not use an algae that gets too slimy and settles heavily. You will want to aerate sufficiently to suspend the algae, but not so much that you interupt sexual coupling. Slimy surfaces will trap nauplii. Chaetoceros gracilis (4 x 4 x 5um) works well. So does TE. You may get faster growth and a higher fecundity if a dinoflagellate or other flagellated green phytoplankter is present. Normal growth rates at 25oC are 10-15 % per day (up to 100 fold increase in 8 days), with harvest densities of 20 to 50 adults copepods per ml.