Live pods for my mandarin

bigloggerhead

New member
I have a green mandarin in my 58. I have about 100 pounds of LR but I want to be extra sure that he says fat and healthy. I have a refugium that is full of pods but I really don't know how many actually get sucked into the display tank. I was thinking of adding some live copepods to be on the safe side. I've seen the Arcti-Pods and Tigger Pods products and was wondering if anyone has any suggestions or better yet personal experience with ordering a live pod product.
 
with our mandarin we have lots of pods and mysis in our fuge... put some of them in the display tank... they found plenty of places in the live rock to hide and multiply... so we have a very fat and happy mandarin... hope this helps
 
What other fish do you have in your tank? If you don't have any other fish that only eat pods, you probably shouldn't need to worry about it. I've heard and will follow this rule for keeping mandarins.

Min. tank size = 60 gallons with at least 60 lbs of rock and a year to mature. If you have that, you should have a healthy mandarin.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9268457#post9268457 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by flrydr
with our mandarin we have lots of pods and mysis in our fuge... put some of them in the display tank... they found plenty of places in the live rock to hide and multiply... so we have a very fat and happy mandarin... hope this helps


I see plenty of amphipods but I think the copepods are hiding in the caulerpa in my fuge. Plus I'm not really sure how to harvest them.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9268456#post9268456 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by killark
What other fish do you have in your tank? If you don't have any other fish that only eat pods, you probably shouldn't need to worry about it. I've heard and will follow this rule for keeping mandarins.

Min. tank size = 60 gallons with at least 60 lbs of rock and a year to mature. If you have that, you should have a healthy mandarin.


I have an exquisite wrasse in my tank but it eats mysis and brine all the time. It also eats Formula 2 and Nori so I don't think it will edge out the mandarin for its share of pods. I also have a multicolor pygmy angel but I'm pretty sure its not going to compete with the mandarin for pods.

My tank is only about 4 months old and I know that's not the recommended age to add a mandarin but I did and now I need to make sure that I keep the fish full and healthy. If that means buying live pods than I'm fully prepared to do that.

That's why I'm trying to find out if anyone has used one of the products I mentioned in my first post. So if there is anyone who has please post.

Thanx
 
Tigger's are widely regarded as the best as I've found, mine eats frozen so I don't add pods as often as before, I don't even remember what mine were. But tiggers are a little bigger, so they are good.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9268830#post9268830 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by nYgel
Tigger's are widely regarded as the best as I've found, mine eats frozen so I don't add pods as often as before, I don't even remember what mine were. But tiggers are a little bigger, so they are good.

What types of frozen does your mandarin eat? Mysis or brine?
 
mysis, but don't rely on this happening. Its easier when you get a young specimen, i did.... same with my scooter.
 
Re: Live pods for my mandarin

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9266434#post9266434 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by bigloggerhead
I have a green mandarin in my 58. I have about 100 pounds of LR but I want to be extra sure that he says fat and healthy. I have a refugium that is full of pods but I really don't know how many actually get sucked into the display tank. I was thinking of adding some live copepods to be on the safe side. I've seen the Arcti-Pods and Tigger Pods products and was wondering if anyone has any suggestions or better yet personal experience with ordering a live pod product.

Arcti-Pods are not a live culture, so if your looking to boost your population of copepods, Tigger-Pods would be the way top go. However, a majority of mandarins I tried Arcti-Pods on readily excepted them and gobbled them down with gusto :D
 
I know that this sounds really weird, but I was reading in a fish magazine about an interesting food source for the mandarins. The author of the article has kept a mandarin in a 24 g aquapod for more than a year. His secret was to feed the mandarin fish roe. It is the same roe that they use in sushi, the little orange ones.
 
I think amphipods are a little too big for mandarins, but as always there are expections to the rule. :D
 
ReefNutrition is an excellent company---if there's a problem, you'll get a phone call from them, and they're very generous with fixes.

Note: I had to supplement my gal for a long time, but a fat and happy mandarin who's dominant in her tank and gets hungry will start looking covetously at what everybody else is eating, and go on frozen, eventually. A hungry and desperate mandarin who's not faring well just goes on looking for non-existent pods and starves---they're not the brightest lights in the tank, but one should do just fine in your rig, and eventually will start taking other food, like mysis.
 
I would really try the orange roe, i'll try to get the magazine name and issue so you could look it up yourself
 
If you go the roe route, be sure it doesn't have anything added (many do).

FWIW, the little orange roe used in sushi is typically tobico (flying fish roe)
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9288956#post9288956 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by d9sccr
I would really try the orange roe, i'll try to get the magazine name and issue so you could look it up yourself

Check out February's issue of Tropical Fish Hobbyist. I think that's the name. Melev's in there with the Mandarin Diner and another guy about raising a Mandarin in a nano.
 
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