Breeding copepods for dragonet

[reefnewbie83177]

Ok, so I didn't do any research before I got talked into buying a Green Mandarine Dragonet. However, I have now made it my mission to provide him with whatever he needs. After much research, I decided to breed copepods to feed this guy. First a little background:

90 gallon tank
130lbs live Rock
Tank is 2 months old
30 gallon sump with refugium - 4-5" sand bed, chaeto, mangrove, one bottle of pods a couple weeks ago

I set up a 10 gallon tank and split it with a divider. Filled both sides 1/3 way up with SW (SG = 1.025). It will use ambient lighting and room temperature. Two air lines with small airstone pumping very low flow air through it. Feeding with phytofeast. Empty half a bottle of tiger pods into each side.

My plan is to let these things get going for a couple of weeks and then start harvesting them. I plan on putting half harvest into refugium and half into the display tank. I think I will add them to the display tank at night when the fish are asleep and the pods can get settled. I plan on doing this as often as I can without depleting my starter culture.

Hopefully over the course of several months or longer (don't know how long this will take) I will have a thriving pod population in the refugium and the display tank that I will no longer have to breed the pods externally.

I know that I should have done this before getting the mandarine, but whats done is done. I am looking for opinions or suggestions on my setup.

Thanks for looking

 

[BL1]

Why not just buy a bag of pods? Seems like that would be cheaper and easier.

 

[reefnewbie83177]

Why not just buy a bag of pods? Seems like that would be cheaper and easier.

One bottle of pods cost $20-$30 and you get ~250-500 pods per bottle. Dragonets can eat upwards of a couple hundred pods or more a day. Therefor, I don't think that it would be cheaper, as the way I have it set up I am only out 20 bucks for one bottle. Then they should propagate. If you have a source of cheap pods I would be more than interested.

 

[LSUtiger]

It would be better if you had waited to get the population going before putting him in, but you may find you don't need to do anything special. I have a 70gal with fuge with probably less rock than you and have had my mandarin for over 2 years. My tank was 6 months old, and 30-40 lbs of rock was close to 2 years old probably.

Just thought I'd give you a data point.

 

[reefnewbie83177]

It would be better if you had waited to get the population going before putting him in, but you may find you don't need to do anything special. I have a 70gal with fuge with probably less rock than you and have had my mandarin for over 2 years. My tank was 6 months old, and 30-40 lbs of rock was close to 2 years old probably.

Just thought I'd give you a data point.

Thanks for that. Yeah, I know, and will now always be researching the fish I buy before I get them. Hopefully this method will work. It doesn't sound like breeding pods is to difficult.

What do you have in your fuge? I don't have any live rock, but I do have a large ball of chaeto. Is this sufficient for the pods or should I add more chaeto or live rock? I really want my tank swarming with these guys, so I never have to worry about my dragonet.

 

[LSUtiger]

The population will explode just fine in your fuge. I do have rock in mine with chaeto. I'm not sure if it matters, but it can't hurt I figure. Maybe I'm wrong.

I never see any bugs in my display tank for what it's worth except for occasionally under my magnavore algae scraper thing. I guess they've learned that's a safe place for them.

I think buying a bottle of pods is a good idea since your tank is still new. I'd dump more in the display than the fuge. To be safe, I would maybe do this once a month for a few months then maybe once every other month for another time or two.

Good luck.

 

[sslak]

What I did was culture half of my store bought bottle, and put the other half of the bottle into the sump to let them propagate there.

Cultering pods isn't very hard. Melevsreef has a pretty good write up on culturing phyto to feed them.

Culturing pods is just like culturing phyto...except you need the phyto first. Once you put the pods in they'll start to eat it, so you need to keep dosing phyto into your pod culture.

 

[davocean]

IMO opinon the only mistake was rushing on getting a mandarin, 2 mo is pretty soon, but other than that your system should sustain one.
Personally I would just buy some pods to boost your system, and keep macro in fuge.

 

[el aguila]

Pods are very easy to culture. Go to Reeds and look up their copepod info. I just keep mine in 10 x 14 tupperware 2" deep water, and feed Reed's Pytofeast to keep the water tinted green /w no air pump.

Unfortunately it will take a while to get a strong enough culture to keep the mandarian alive.

Do some searches on RC on Mandarians and you will find those who have trained their Mandarian to eat pellets in the meantime. Pellets aren't really a complete food, yet it is a good thing to train them to eat them.

 

[SharkFin]

Mandarins are slow eaters. Your system is big enough to sustain a mandarin most definitely. I have managed to keep a mandarin strong and healthy in a 20 gallon nano for well over a year. I have to breed pods for him, but I was lucky to get one that accepts mysis as well. Im with the others on just letting your system take care of him for a while to see how he does. If he doesnt eat, or eat enough then start implementing your pod breeding system. Good luck.

P.S. I "trained" my mandarin to eat mysis by turning off the pumps, distracting other fish with food in the water column and hand pipe feeding him almost directly to his mouth. Try it out.

 

[humaguy]

I would go to reefs2go and buy some pods...better than the bottle stuff imo...