feeding mandarins and cultivating pods

[gary faulkner]

yeame,sttroyiii and anyone else, please chime in. I have a scooter in qt for about a week now. Saw your comments about blood worms and picked some up today at Petsmart. The package says (red mosquito larva) for all fresh water fish.

Is this the right product? Will this be OK for my scooter and corals?

TIA

 

[scottfarcuz]

Culturing copepods isn't hard, or very time consuming on a small scale. Articles on culturing pods, and lots of other live feed can be found in a sticky post in the fish breeding forum.

I've had a lot of luck selling, and trading them in my local reef club also. Not a lot of money to be made, but nice to trade for frags.

 

[mthedude]

I had a spotted mandarin in a 55 w/about 65lbs of Live Rock, have a fuge and he was doing great, jumped out of the tank one day and we found him all dried up when we moved, sad, he was our favorite fish.

I found that if you build a wall or somewhere pods can congrigate without worry of being eaten then will reproduce like mad and supply your fish all the food he can eat. A fuge helps but you can make a littel pod sanctuary in your tank with a pile of rubble or shells, the strawberry container thing can work also, either way just check your pod population at night and if you see 10 or more, that means there are probably 1000's of them.

Good luck!

 

[gabrito]

Would 2 clowns and a royal gramma compete with a mandarin for pods???

 

[angelsil]

Clowns and grammas aren't notorious pod eaters, so in a big enough tank I wouldn't be worried about it. My 2 mandarins are in my 125 with 2 clowns and a gramma (and a bunch of other fish). We've had both over a year and they seem to be doing fine. *fingers crossed*

 

[gabrito]

thanks, i'm building a 55 with a 10g sump/refugium. i already have the 2 clowns and the royal gramma so once the tank is about 6 months old i was planning on adding the mandarin.

 

[gabrito]

thanks, i'm building a 55 with a 10g sump/refugium. i already have the 2 clowns and the royal gramma so once the tank is about 6 months old i was planning on adding the mandarin.

 

[NCreefwannabe]

Ive thought about buying some of the bottles of pods off ebay or the floridapet.com, I dont have a mandarin yet, but id love to get one soon. Figured if I made a ncie home for pods first it would help later on instead of doing it the other way.

 

[Sk8r]

Mine has been eating imported pods, native pods, and just discovered cyclopeeze---I'm pretty sure she was eating it. This would be great if true---

 

[gabrito]

if you buy the bottle you can also pour half in the tank and the other half in a tuperware or something and they keep multiplying there. I did it in the past to feed a scooter blenny and they kept having babies. no airation, no filter, no heater.

 

[scyphozoa]

Aside from just the copepods try baby brine also. I have been adding baby brine twice daily to my tank for about two to three years now. Even if your mandarin doesn't appear to eat them directly they feed mysid shimp populations which I have seen mandarins also eat. My mysid populations grew notably after I started the baby brine (-I have a 150 gal tank). I think my mysids hitch-hiked into my tank with other livestock but you can ask your LFS if you need a starter bunch.
I have two mandarins, a female green (striped) and a male spotted. The male (pictured below) took about a year or more before he started eating frozen food and I see him eating the live small mysids from time to time. My green female is newer to the tank and has not accepted cyclopeze, frozen, or other prepared food but does eat the live brine (as well as pods, mysids). If you are lucky your mandarin may get less finicky but patience is key and some individuals just aren't easily converted.

 

[Boxer_Crab]

Hello there hows it going?
Your tank size isn't the problem and as long as you have a minimum of 80 pounds of live rock your mandarin should be a happy mandarin. Your tank is stable and should be infested with all kinds of pods for it to eat. I love to watch my mandarin mist out debris through its gills all day long.