Breeding clownfish as a supplemental food source for Mandarin

lifeoffaith

Member
I am looking into getting a Mandarin that will already be feeding on frozen, but also looking for ways to supplement feeding. I have two clownfish pairs that appear to be just about ready to start laying eggs (cleaning, territorial, etc). They should start anytime now. I don't plan on raising the fry. I have heard that Mandarins will eat fry, I'm just wondering how well this would supplement feeding. They will usually breed about once a month or better, right?
 
It would probably be easier to raise some other kind of live food like microworms. Clownfish fry are kinda difficult to gather up. Plus, you don't know if they'll suddenly stop breeding, whereas you have a guarantee with a culture of something.
 
I suspect it's negligible.

This too.

They should lay every 2 weeks or so but without feeding them rotifers they wont last long. Also if you tried to keep the fry alive and fed them rotifers, you'd have to get into culturing or buying phyto too. With all that work it would probably be easier to just culture copepods which manadarins would prefer anyway.
 
I am looking into getting a Mandarin that will already be feeding on frozen

frozen food for any dragonet is nothing more than a supplement. it should not be your intended primary food source for the fish.

the primary food should be their ability to graze for their pods.

reading through your past posts it looks like you're bringing up a 120 with an external macro tank for algae/pod cultures?

have you considered adding a shared sump between the two tanks? if space/configuration permits it, plumbing the two together could benefit you with increased water volume, and what would essentially be a display refugium, allowing water and tiny critters to flow back and forth between the tanks without rock swapping. i'm actually planning a similar setup when i get my 150 running later this year.

if you're looking in to additional supplemental feeding for you mandy, check out the PaulB style feeders:

http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2113800&highlight=feeding+station

these work well for newly hatched baby brine shrimp.

white worms can also be cultured and fed. i will sometimes also feed black worms to mine, but since they don't last more than a few seconds in saltwater, this is more or less an occasional treat.

culturing pods is a pretty easy/fun thing to do too. requires minimal attention, and never hurts to have them on hand.

although if you have a decent amount of rock and sand in your 120, that should be sufficient for one normal sized dragonet. even more so if you do a sump/fuge, or a display fuge.
 
I am currently building a separate copepod tank. I don't have the 120 anymore. I do have a 46 gallon tank with about 70 lbs of live rock in it. I'd also consider culturing something else, what does it take to culture micro worms?
 
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