A Copepod PLUMP with Pigments! Meet Tigriopus Californicus!

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]Hi, Teras Pluskin here and welcome back to the Calypso Aquaculture Laboratory.

[00:00:05]Welcome back to another episode of TopShelf Aquatics YouTube and today we will be spotlighting what is arguably the most wellknown and most recognizable reef copapod species currently available to our hobby and in fact one of the copapod species most widely known in scientific and academic circles worldwide. Today we'll be doing a spotlight into the biology and characteristics of the harpacttocoid copod tigriopus californicus. We're talking about its life history, where it comes in the wild, what biological attributes and environmental adaptations it's acquired from living in that harsh environment, and then kind of observing how all those environmental adaptations translate into its great beneficial qualities as a live feed and its applications in the reef aquarium industry and in the world of commercial aquaculture and potentially in technologies and industries beyond. So welcome. Today we'll be briefly discussing the biology of this wonderful and majestic harpacttocoid kopod species. Let's talk about tigriopus californicus. Tigriopus californicus enjoys an impressive wild geographical distribution being found in ecosystems as far north as Torch Bay, Alaska and as far south down the Pacific American coast down towards Baja Mexico. To understand the magic of Tigriopus Californicus, one must understand the context and the wild habitats and ecosystems of which this copapod has evolved to colonize and thrive in. Think of that geographical range all the way from Torch Bay, Alaska down to Baja Mexico. This is an environment defined by the Pacific Ocean. specifically Pacific oceans interaction with the rocky exposed shore of areas such as Alaska and California.

[00:02:06]These are environments where huge waves are splashing onto the shore with the rise and flow of tides. Deep deep cold water coming off of offshore upwelling coming in. So that very very cold 50°ree water hits the shore of California.

[00:02:25]A huge wave rises into the air and droplets and volumes of water land on the porous embedded rocky outcroppings of the shore. It is here with the coming and ebbing and flowing of the tides where these temporary tide pool ecosystems are formed. It is these ecosystems that Tigriopus has gained a profound mastery. And it is because Tigriopus Californicus has been such successful colonizer these tide pool environments surviving not only the rapid velocity of the waves crashing on the shore but the rising temperature and salinity of the sun as the tide pools eb away and then eventually to be reintegrated back into the cold uh overall salinity of the seawater. It is the ability of tigriopus to persist and thrive in these environments. the tools, the biological and metabolic mechanisms that it has derived and sustained no matter where it ends up. That my dear viewer is where the superpowers and the beneficial qualities of this copapod lie. So we will be discussing some of these in more detail and how they translate the beneficial attributes that make this copapod so promising to industries within and outside the reef aquarium. The first profound superpower of Tigriopus Californicus is its ability to cling to surfaces even when under immense water flow. The utility of this is obvious in Tigriopus' wild environment where this copapod must hold on to rocks and other substrates even when the roaring waves of the Pacific coast roar all around them. When it comes to cultivating this particular copod species, this cling behavior can make it especially challenging to harvest as this copod loves and is quite adept at being able to hold onto saves uh during harvesting. Equally as impressive as the strong limbs of this copapod, able to attach to surfaces even when water surges around them, is the amazing plasticity and diversity of their foraging and feeding mouth parts.

[00:04:37]Because of the diverse and multifaceted capacity of these feeding mouth parts, Tigriopus Californicus is an adept feeder at both free swimming and attached forage on substrates. That combined with the plasticity that's able to demonstrate it's able to eat lots of different things no matter what it's exposed to has allowed Tigriopus to eat and thrive on whatever bacteria, detritis, phytolanton, smaller copapods or other small organic particles are present no matter what salinity or temperature that particular population is going through at that given time. For our purposes in the reef aquarium industry, this is highly advantageous as Tigriopus not only can eat a wide variety of commercially available phytolanton feeds, but is also able to eat dry inert feeds and be able to utilize detritus and other organic particles and bacteria present in the reef aquarium itself. Tigriopus Californicus mopi are used to being tossed roughly onto rocky tide pools.

[00:05:41]They in comparison to many many other copapods of other species are incredibly tough especially for being such a small laral state. And many studies have demonstrated that one of the superpowers of tigriopus is the fact that the nopi and juvenile stages are as resilient if not more resilient than some of the adult later form specimens. This means that Tigriopus cultures are even more capable of being able to adapt to a wide range of potential ecosystems in an aquarium. And more importantly, they're able to rapidly adapt and be able to be easily cultivatable under a wide variety of temperatures and salinities in their own culture vessels as well. Another apparent superpower that Tigriopus has is its profound ability to always find a mate. You have to think about that these populations are being diced and sliced and scattered across the the coast. They need to be able to find mates and begin mating and begin the next generation within hours if not minutes of them ending up in that that that new tide pool. These copapods, especially the males, when they reach an adult size, their antenna become highly modified to the point where they almost become fourlim arms. arms that are able to be wielded by the male, the male which is then extremely particular in which female that he chooses. And there's been a lot of studies that kind of dulge into which female copapod a male tigopus will choose. And long story short, some of these uh observations are intuitive, some of them are not. Some of them are very intuitive in that male tigriopus copaopods will always seek out larger more likely to be larger eggbearing females. They will then seek those out and then they will attach to them those modified antenni for a period of culation. The female will then become inseminated. And the fascinating point here is that the female once she is inseminated once will only retain that single male's genetic sperm. Even though she may mate several other times, she retains the same genetic fidelity of that first mating event, hinting that that first mating event in that selection is absolutely paramount to dictating overall swings in the genetic possibilities of these populations as they are introduced, reattered, and reintegrated across the coast. Something also more counterintuitive is the fact that scientists have observed how changing levels of temperature and salinity dictate the pherommones given off by particular females also swaying male selection for mates and overall dictating the dynamics of these copapods uh under various conditions. In a practical setting, when trying to culture these copapods at home, it is always good to observe that your population has not only a good amount of napi, kopodites, and adults, but essential that the adults that you do have are either a egg bearing females that are holding on to the eggs until they can hatch as eye or better yet finding a greater fraction of your population to have males and females actively in the act of culation. in mating. Through these rough uh observations, a aquaculturist can easily discern if their tigriopus c uh tigriopus culture is on the upswing or in a state of stagnation based on the mating dynamics alone because they occupy tide pool environments that are getting oftentimes heated to very hot temperatures by the sun. Tigriopus californicus have also demonstrated extreme competency at being able to resist low oxygen and hypoxic events. In fact, some studies have observed that tigriopus populations can go over 72 hours under hypoxic conditions. In the reef aquarium industry, this is highly advantageous for being able to ship large amounts of copapods in limited water volumes with limited amounts of available dissolved oxygen. Tigriopus Californicus has also been demonstrated to have specialized eye sensitivity to ultraviolet radiation more so than other spectrums of visible light. Tigriopus californicus has have been observed in the laboratory to avoid high UV indexes but are indifferent to ambient levels of different visible light. There is a fascinating cause and effect when it comes to some of these latterment superpowers demonstrated by Tigriopus in the context of the wild environment of which we know that they thrive in. High levels of UV sensitivity in the eyes combined with the ability to withstand long levels of hypoxic events also combined with other observations such as what you can see right here by the fact that they're a delightful cherry red color. Now what does this mean? Well, one of the things that scientists are most fascinated and vexed with when it comes with comes to tigriopus is its ability to act as a giant copapod factory converting its d pigments that it gets from the diet and all the other things that it forges on and it can convert those building blocks into that cherry red color. It converts them into beta carotene and specifically the wonderful name brand pigment aazanthin.

[00:11:20]The same pigment that makes salmon fillets so red. The same pigment that goes for thousands of dollars for its various neutrautical health and industrial applications. Yes, tigriopus has been demonstrated as you can see here to be able to take things that are not red such as let's say green tetraelmus phytolankton and when exposed to the right wavelengths of light will turn all that dietary pigment into a red coloration. Now, that's all fun, well, and good. Isn't it nice to have a red Copa G whiz? But that color, all color is functional. And that color, that vibrant cherry red coloration, that hints at some of the superpowers both demonstrated by Tigriopus that we know about, it hints at potential long-term applications and value. Let's go through it. Why have that cherry red color?

[00:12:14]Well, we're in that tide pool, you see.

[00:12:16]And the sun, the sun is cooking us, and it's cooking us with UV radiation, ultraviolet UVA, UVB, and god forbid UVC radiation. Radiation that will cook our cells, denature them, and and at best uh cause cancer and at worst cause absolute abject death of the organism. So what does one need? If you cannot escape the sun, if there is no shade, you need sunblock. And that is what tigriopus does. It takes all that it consumes and through the magic of its mitochondrial DNA it can convert all of that into aazanthin which is a pigment that acts as a functional sunblock protecting tigriopus and allowing its populations to thrive even when being abjectly cooked with UV radiation.

[00:13:04]Now what is one other thing that we know about pigments from our other episodes on rodamonus mic microalgae is that pigments especially red aazanthin are essentially biological batteries capable of storing massive amounts of oxygen facilitating the transportation and storage of oxygen between cells. So to have massive amounts of asisanthin not only makes you a pretty cherry color, but it makes you immune to the sun and allows you to store enough oxygen to survive, let's say, a hypoxic event of 72 hours or more. So this color is functional and we demonstrate it in the superpowers which allow Tigryopas to not only survive but thrive, conquer, and colonize up and down the western American coast. Now we'll begin to take and translate some of these observations into oh wow isn't it neat in the wild then begin to narrow in on why and therefore how we can apply it to some benefit specifically here the benefit of the reef aquarium industry. Well, asanthin is a very expensive and important food ingredient. One that is necessary uh on a small scale for feeding highquality food to your grouper and on a large scale essential for being able to make let's say the American aquaculture industrial production of salmon work. So to be able to have an organism that is able to take inferior pigments and turn them into asanthin is a bit of a magic trick and to be able to translate the observation that it can do that and then we go into application. So if the sun is what is causing the UV radiation that is causing this cherry red color, we can then move backwards and infer as aquaculturous that yes, periodic and if not prolonged exposure to UVA and UVB radiation, let's say from a reptile uh heating basking bulb will then give Tigriopus enough of the photochemical cue to rapidly produce theanthin and zim bada bim an efficac way to take chigopus and purposefully enhance its production of aazanthin.

[00:15:11]Yes, it is the magic of this bio conversion of forage detritus phytolanton waste into aazanthin which is making tigriopus something of greater and greater potential value and interest to aquaculture at all scales. First is the immediate application potentially for mass wastewater treatment where you can take large amounts of solids organics and potentially have a mechanism to harvest these copapods because they're not that terribly hard to harvest and get asthan an immediately marketable byproduct out of that. We move up to one more tier of sensitivity.

[00:15:46]As more and more interest is being derived into developing masscale greenwater reactors where trillions and quintilions of these tigriopus are grown with massive amounts of gallonage of phytolankton so they can be mass dosed into largecale nurseries full of uh things such as Mediterranean seabbream.

[00:16:05]But more importantly, because this is a cold water organism, growing interest in applying it towards feeding the juvenile Atlantic salmon aquaculture industry where these salmon can be fed massive amounts of aisanthin rich probioticrich tigriopus kumopods. Beyond the realm of commercial aquaculture into nurseries and the like, we enter tigriopus' relevance in the home reef aquarium.

[00:16:31]Now, despite its ability to be able to cling on to various substrates and its ability to rapidly consume a wide variety of forage, I would be reticent to say the tigriopus has the same colonization capacity as let's say Tisby Benthis does in the average rape aquarium environment. And that is a twofold uh rationale why. One is that it has a slightly slower generation time and and frankly it is a little bit more of a cold water copod and thrives a little bit more in temperatures less than 75° but also the fact that is so gosh darn delicious. It is that perfect great middle size that not only can be bred at a mass scale in let's say a 5gallon bucket in an office or a small fish room, but that perfect size that and that perfect propulsion, that perfect pep matched with that cherry color, maybe with a tail of of glowing red nutritious eggs that makes it essentially the perfect target, the perfect target for a hungry mandarin dragonette, pipe fish, even a jellyfish.

[00:17:40]There is a growing body of finicky zop plankton feeding fish that tigriopus has proved to be a wonderful applicant for uh an organism that can be raised under very very modest conditions in a home aquarium inoculent population can be used to make a culture that can be used for hundreds of feedings and one that we know will take all of the forage no matter what it's fed be it refoids or benipets or tetra microalgae or even detritus or or some ciliate or some other random pool pod and we know that if under the same condition especially if exposed to a little bit of UVB light from a reptile basking bulb will then take all that nutrition and bioconvert it the most precious pigment that we know asanthin a wonderful addition to any atheus or mandarin's diet pigment that we know will facilitate oxygen transport within that cell and we know will become fused with the fat that fish to demonstrate greater vibrancy and greater color just in the same way that it makes the salmon fililelets that we buy at the supermarket so beautifully cherry red as the cop pods you see next to me. So that's a little bit about Tigriopus Californicus. It's a cold water cop pod that can get hot. It's a cop pod that can survive under a wide variety of conditions. And because it can do that, it has all these genetic tools. Genetic tools that are really worthy of observation and appreciation at all scales. Yes, Tiguropus Californicus is a spunky copapod which offers nothing but potential benefit to the industries of the reef aquarium industry and the research technological industries, commercial wastewater treatment and commercial aquaculture of tomorrow. And for that reason, we are honored to be able to work with it and we are very excited to be able to offer it uh to be spread across the country and propagated by many enthusiasts such as you. So we will see you next time. Please be like Tigriopus and bup all over that subscribe and like button. Help us propagate, survive and and spread our message just like Tigriopus spreads its wonderful cherry offspring up and down the coast from Alaska down to Baja. And we will see you next time.