Live Foods

Live Copepods

A$40.00 AUD

Live cultures leave us on Mondays and Tuesdays only, so nothing sits in a depot over the weekend.
Order once Tuesday's run has gone (11:00pm AEST) and yours travels on the following Monday or Tuesday.
Best Bottle Guarantee: you get the best bottle available commercially, or your money back.
DOA Money Back Guarantee. If it turns up dead, send us a short video and we refund it.
Purchasing in Tasmania? You MUST provide the appropriate permit(s) for us to ship live foods with your order, otherwise any live foods in your order will be refunded and the remaining items shipped without them.

Live copepods, done properly

Looking for live copepods for sale? Buy live reef copepods from Aquaculture Kings, harvested fresh and shipped fast Australia-wide with our Best Bottle Guarantee. This 500mL bottle of live reef copepods is what you want when you're seeding a new tank, feeding mandarins and gobies, or topping up an established reef. Healthy reef copepods, every order, or we make it right.

Start your reef right and seed with live copepods early, then maintain strong and stable populations with regular top ups. Copepods are one of the most important microfauna in a reef system, serving as both a cleanup crew and a live food source. They graze on detritus, film algae, and microplankton, helping to reduce waste and improve water clarity. At the same time, they are a critical part of the food web, feeding mandarins, gobies, wrasses, anthias, and juvenile fish. Regular dosing ensures continuous biodiversity, supports coral health, and strengthens the base of your tank’s ecosystem.

Benefits of Live Copepods (500mL):

Natural source of highly nutritious live food for picky eaters like mandarins, dragonets, and small wrasses
Help control film algae, detritus, and excess microplankton
Boost biodiversity and system stability
Essential for seeding new tanks and supporting the nitrogen cycle
Aid in the reproduction of filter feeders and corals by providing continuous microfauna activity
Sustain populations with regular dosing, especially in high flow or predator heavy systems
Cultured in clean marine conditions with no additives or preservatives

Which one do I want

Five species, side by side

They are not interchangeable. Size decides which fish can physically eat them, and habit decides where they end up living once they are in the tank. Pick on those two things before anything else.

0.5 to 0.75 mm

Tisbe
Benthic
In stock
0.6 to 0.8 mm

Dioithona
Planktonic
Out of stock
0.6 to 1.0 mm

Apocyclops
Planktonic
In stock
0.8 to 1.5 mm

Tigriopus
Benthic
In stock
1.0 to 1.5 mm

Calenoid
Planktonic
Out of stock

Benthic species stay on the rock and glass, so they breed in the tank and keep producing. Planktonic species swim in the water column, which is what a mandarin or a wrasse actually hunts. Most tanks do best with one of each.

What they actually do

Why a reef wants copepods in it

They are not just fish food. A tank with a working pod population feeds itself between your feeds, and that is the difference between keeping fish alive and watching them thrive.

Food that is already alive
Live prey moves, and movement is what triggers a fish to hunt. It is the difference between a mandarin picking at the rock all day and one that actually eats.
Better colour and condition
Copepods carry the fatty acids that frozen and dry food lose in processing. Fish fed on live pods hold their colour and put weight back on.
They clean up after you
Pods graze detritus, film algae and the food your fish missed, so less of it breaks down into nitrate and phosphate.
A food web, not a feeding schedule
Once a population establishes it keeps producing on its own. The tank stops depending entirely on what you put in it each day.
Corals feed on them too
Nauplii, the larval stage, are small enough for LPS and many softies to catch. You see it as better polyp extension.
Almost nothing to maintain
Seed the tank, keep some phyto going in, and leave them to it. A refugium or a bit of rubble rock is all the help they need.