Liquid feeders

[CrayolaViolence]

:hmm2:
that's not the point.

your tank is FAR too young to have developed a sufficient pod population to feed ONE mandarin let alone two. They hunt constantly. When you see them pick at things doesn't mean they're getting a pod every time.

What the LFS has/does doesn't mean it's right...for them it's supposed to be a temporary situation before they're sold....right?
If the LFS jumped off a bridge does that seem like a good idea to follow?

First, I stock my tank with pods. I don't expect them to just be there. Yes live pods, on a nearly weekly basis. Second I do have pods growing in great numbers in my refugium. I.e. I stocked them there again, and keep them that way. And like I said, when they're in the mood, they will even eat the frozen pods.

 

[CrayolaViolence]

There's just no way around it, the mandys physically need something you can't give them.

Like I said, I buy live copepods on nearly a weekly basis. I'm aware that copods are all they eat. I did my research on the fish before I bought them. I'm growing them in my refugium and in my larger tank both. When I see the number of copods start to go down, I replenish them with another batch from either the store where I got the fish, or I order them live.

It's no different than feeding yourself or any other animal, you run out, or low, you get more. Even animals who eat live food you can re-stock their diet. When I built my pond I fed the inhabitants for three years until the pond balanced out and its echo system was able to support itself. After then (and I know this isn't like a much smaller tank because I'm, talking much, much larger as well as fresh not salt water here) I didn't even need the pumps for filtering or air into the water. The amount of greenery I grew in the tank took care of the filtering and air supporting many different life forms.

Before I decided on the Mandarins, I had considered sea horses. You want to talk about eating a lot and constantly. I decided I was not ready for that at all, so I have put them on my "maybe one day list" but not right now. When I do, they will have a totally different environment.


As for the nutrient issue, thanks for that info, I'll just have to find another way then as because my gonipora needs to be fed small amounts multiple times a day. It's the only way it does well.

 

[ffreyonn]

I dose my tank with plankton to feed them and the copods my mandarine eat.

 

[sde1500]

While obviously it is good to advocate proper care for tanks, it sometimes gets out of hand here IMO. He has a thread specifically mentioning the two mandarins. Can everyone stick to their crusading in that thread? Searching his thread history, and going off topic to bring up stuff you already went after him for in another thread is way unnecessary.

 

[atraperegrinus]

Like I said, I buy live copepods on nearly a weekly basis. I'm aware that copods are all they eat. I did my research on the fish before I bought them. I'm growing them in my refugium and in my larger tank both. When I see the number of copods start to go down, I replenish them with another batch from either the store where I got the fish, or I order them live.

It's no different than feeding yourself or any other animal, you run out, or low, you get more. Even animals who eat live food you can re-stock their diet. When I built my pond I fed the inhabitants for three years until the pond balanced out and its echo system was able to support itself. After then (and I know this isn't like a much smaller tank because I'm, talking much, much larger as well as fresh not salt water here) I didn't even need the pumps for filtering or air into the water. The amount of greenery I grew in the tank took care of the filtering and air supporting many different life forms.

Before I decided on the Mandarins, I had considered sea horses. You want to talk about eating a lot and constantly. I decided I was not ready for that at all, so I have put them on my "maybe one day list" but not right now. When I do, they will have a totally different environment.


As for the nutrient issue, thanks for that info, I'll just have to find another way then as because my gonipora needs to be fed small amounts multiple times a day. It's the only way it does well.

you could put a bag of pods in that tank EVERY day, twice a day and it still would not feed one of those fish, much less 2, heres a direct paste from a post made by sk8r, please read it, and heed the advice being given to you here, or in due time both of those fish will die.

Posted 03/03/2012 at 09:44 AM by Sk8r
A mandy should be making a successful 'kill' of a pod every 5 seconds to remain healthy. Keeping one in a well-established 50 with 50 lbs of holey rock, and a mature, year-old 20 gallon fuge with another 20 lbs of rock is very marginal. If you meet those conditions and there is no competition for pods, you can do it with caution. A hundred gallon tank is better.

To run the math, there are 86400 seconds in 24 hours...and given 12 hours of dark when it is not eating (it actually eats before the lights come on...that is 43200 seconds of daylight, divided by 5 (every five seconds)---meaning that a mandy eats about 8640 pods a day, or 720 an hour. Two thousand pods, if fed to it in the required concentration, will be eaten in less than 3 hours. If you have a pair---do the math. You need at least 100 gallons supported by a very large, strong fuge with cheato and live rock.

i bolded the important part for you. keep in mind, thats for ONE, not two. so your bag of pods is gone in less than an hour and a half using his math. unless you're buying some magic bag of pods that has 4 million in it, 99% of them i see have 1000-2000 pods in them for sale.

good luck and enjoy the hobby, but please for the sake of your animals take them back until your tank is more mature.

edit: falling on deaf ears, good luck. i hope they survive.

 

[CrayolaViolence]

you could put a bag of pods in that tank EVERY day, twice a day and it still would not feed one of those fish, much less 2, heres a direct paste from a post made by sk8r, please read it, and heed the advice being given to you here, or in due time both of those fish will die.

i bolded the important part for you. keep in mind, thats for ONE, not two. so your bag of pods is gone in less than an hour and a half using his math. unless you're buying some magic bag of pods that has 4 million in it, 99% of them i see have 1000-2000 pods in them for sale.

good luck and enjoy the hobby, but please for the sake of your animals take them back until your tank is more mature.

edit: falling on deaf ears, good luck. i hope they survive.

I'm not taking them back and they are not going to starve. You could "cook" enough pods in a five gallon bucket to feed an army of mandarins if you know how to grow them. It isn't rocket science. You feed them, you light them, you give them refuge and they breed like flies. My tank is crawling with copods. Just my tank, not to mention my refugium. And all this talk about "you have fish poo" to feed your corals. If I got rid of them I would have no fish poo. I was going to get sea horses at first. Talk about eating A LOT. So my whole set up was first designed to make a lot of copods. My new tank will have a 45 gallon dedicated copod farm with macro algae to feed my tank.

As for the liquid feeder, I found what I needed on ebay. Very cheap, simple, with a valve to do a slow drip in much the same way as running a drip line from the copod factory to the main tank. No batteries, no power, just a valve to give a slow drip putting in the same amount I would daily, over a period of 24 hours.
And I'm sorry but saying that I need to get rid of my mandarin because of how much they eat is as ridiculous as saying get rid of photosynthetic coral because they need plankton and a tank can't support them. (or big dog because of how much it eats"¦you can't possibly own two Saint Bernard because they eat 50 + plus pounds of food a week). People replenish the plankton by buying it, or you grow it, they don't expect their tanks to make it and people don't go telling them to get rid of their coral because they aren't growing it or they might run out. The man I purchase my stock from has been doing salt water, and only salt water, for over 20 years. He knows his stuff. I follow his directions on growing my copods and I get very good results. And like I said, if I start seeing a drop in numbers, I go buy a few thousand, anywhere from 2-5 depending on how plentiful they look in my tank. I'll probably learn to grow my own plankton next, or is that impossible to (and yes I know people do it already) or do you have to be plankton approved by the plankton police before you're grants permission to do so?

 

[laga77]

One of the biggest misconceptions about Mandarins is that they only eat pods. When in fact they have a diverse diet in the wild. From Wiki; "Based on the gut analyses of 7 wild fish Sadovy et al. (2001) determined that the mandarinffish has a mixed diet that consists of harpacticoid copepods, polychaete worms, small gastropods, gammaridean amphipods, fish eggs and ostracods. In the wild, feeding is continuous during daytime; the fish peck selectively at small prey trapped on coral substrate in a home range of many square meters." For long term success their diets need to be supplemented. The best way for this in the home is to feed them live BS or live White Worms or Blackworms.