Large pods nipping at zoas Help appreciated!

[Smork81]

I've allready bought the mandarin. I would rather see how she does with the large pod's. She is a larger mandarin i bought the biggest one i could find so it would be able to eat the larger pods now.I'd rather not get another fish for pods cause a mandarin in a 55g plus a sixline to eat pods would probably decimate my whole population and i do not want that to happen. Now since i have the mandarin i take out a clump of chaeto once a week frm the fuge and put it in a corner in my display tank. Trade those out weekly and put the one in the tank back in the fuge and take another clump with pods on it to put in the tank from the fuge. I hope this does the trick for keeping a good suply of pods in my 55g. Could i just shake the chaeto off in the 55g also? Would it get enough pods off of it for my mandarin for a week?
nika

 

[650-IS350]

Depending on how much pods you already have there that have matured and are breeding... questionable people usually say a years worth of pods that have bred in the tank... and must have matured tank that can keep on producing pods..

You can add live phyto in to your tank to feed the pods and help them breed more.. or you can go the route of buying pods in a bottle every other month to keep your population up.

and when I mean pods " COPEPODS " they will get eaten too I believe by the much larger AMPIPODS... cause when I saw a large bloom of large ampipods my smaller copepods litterally dissapeared... but now with the extreme controll that my mandarin, 6line and a few wrasses have put on the large ampipods, I am starting to see copepods again.. slowly but its a start

 

[Smork81]

Thanks for the info delsol650. I havent had a large population of pods in it since the tank started. its over a year and a half old. The reason i believe it has this large pop. of pods is because of some newly purchsed chaeto and other marine macros that were engulfed with the damn pods. they are cool to look at though. I found a few that are green! all the rest are transparent or white to brown.

I have been thinking of making phyto cultures on my own. Seems to be really easy. Where can i buy a few strains of phyto to start everything out? I havent really seen any online when i do searches for it.

 

[650-IS350]

DUDE, very easy...

Just make sure your jar, airline, NO air stone " use stiff palstic pipe with holes ", airline tubing, but all must be sanitized... using 75% water 25% chlorine... I soaked mine for a hr. then rinse fully.. let dry... make sure non off the cleaned items touch anything dirty. Make your RO water and mix salt to about 1.024.

I used clean med gloves while assembling jar/airline tubing/tube with holes acting as airstone/lid with hole on top for air tubing to run through.....

put saltwater in.. NO NEED for heater as phyto grows better in cold water ( I keep mine in my basement ).. They use light to grow so I put a desk light a foot from the culture using a 6500K light 10-13 watts white from any hardware store. 12hr photo period..

once culture is dropped in and air is running through... just drop in a couple drops of food ( Schultz liquid fertilizer ) 3-5 drops MAX for the duration of the culture... you start with it looking very clear to slight tint of green. after a week or so when the culture looks very dark green... I take out a cup or 2 and feed direct to my corals. then replenish the saltwater taken out. then every other week add 1 drop of Schultz.

every couple of day I swirl the jar.. grab the jar and motion it to make the water inside the jar to swirl a little bit to keep stuff from sinking into the middle of jar and hardening up.

sounds dawnting while reading, but when you actually do it... it aint.... the hard thing is keeping is sanitary to avoid contamination and adding other organisms in there to compete with the phyto and resulting in it crashing... Its happend to me twice due to carelessness.

 

[rabid frog]

I bought a 8 line for the same exact reason. I could not be happier with the choice. He eats everything, Pods, Bristle Worms, Little serpant stars and prepared foods.