copepods for mandarin

J

JFord

New member
I'm wanting to raise my copepod population for a mandarin... What is your choice for doing so? Add them to a refugium or culture your own? I've been looking at reef nutrition's bottles of trigger pods and phyto feast , wasn't sure what way to go with it or if there is a better bang for your buck out there.
 
I just ordered 1000 copepods from reefs2go and they had a promotion buy one get one so I got 2000 for like 48 bux shipped. Got em Friday and all were alive. Was pretty cool, in was told arcti pods won't reproduce in aquarium.
 
Thanks for your reply, I'll look into that! I'm amazed.. My post has almost 90 views and only one reply. It's nice that people are willing to offer advice!
 
Probably they don't know...if mandarin keeping was easy, everyone would have one. ;)

I always loved a passive feed refugium for mandarins...basically the same thing as a normal refugium...only on top of the tank, being fed in passively...rather than being chewed up by a pump. :)
 
I've bought pods and kept them in the frug and it worked out fine. I've bought the bottles, from reefs to go, teef cleaners, and aquatech. After about 8 or 9 months I added the mandarin and it worked out just fine
 
Rocsec1...please give some more info about your system and the longevity of your mandarin...this type of ambiguous post can kill many a mandy as people try to copy your methods and have it "work out fine".
 
75 gallon tank 20 gallon fug cheato and live rock in fug. Mandarin was about 2 in size. Was in the 75 for a year until I sold the tank and everything in it. The tank had about 100/120 lbs of live rock. Didn't put anything pod eating in there for 9 months to let the pods get well established. I am going to gety 120 up soon and will do the same again. Right now I have a 40b set up as sump fug and a 40 b frag tank going and I've seeded it with pods to get a head start on a pod population. In the fug section I have the ceremic plates and live rock along with cheato.
 
Thank you, Rocsec! I am not sure a year is a long enough test...but it does sound like there was lots of places for pods to breed! :) Next time, I would recommend never adding competition for a mandarin in a 75 gallon...not just at first, but for good. :)

Thank you so much for explaining!!! Keeps someone from putting a mandarin in their 30 gallon using these same methods. ;)
 
I have a 29 gallon. I seeded the tank 6 months before adding a mandarin. I've had my mandarin for over a month, he's getting fatter everyday and I still have pods crawling all over the place. If you have enough rock structure, you'll never need to continuously add pods.
 
Whoa, Sean...a month does not at all equal success. Never? You have absolutely no way to know that. ;) Sorry, but your mandarin will not survive just on the pods already in your 29 gallon and what it can produce...I'm sure many people on here will agree.
 
Puffyluv said:
Whoa, Sean...a month does not at all equal success. Never? You have absolutely no way to know that. ;) Sorry, but your mandarin will not survive just on the pods already in your 29 gallon and what it can produce...I'm sure many people on here will agree.
Click to expand...

I agree. I have a 75 with a refug and I still seed yearly. I have even setup a 10g tank to grow pods to try adding them monthly. But I have had my current mandarin for about two years.
 
65d9f4eff199dab653f5d0586aee44ec.jpg
 
The pod hotels were made from 4" X 4" squares of corrugated plastic board zip-tied into stacks (I found a sheet of corrugated plastic with the yard signs at Lowes). I used 1/2 PCV with tubing zip-tied to the ends to keep the stacks from floating.
 
Ha I never new Manarins were hard to keep until I read this. I had one for almost 4 years in my last tank, blind luck I guess.
 
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