davidryder
Claris or Elliot?
They will compete with each other for food... 6-lines will gobble up whatever pods he can get his mouth on.
Maintaining copepod populations for a mandarin
- Thread starter Hades
- Start date
coral acquisition
Active member
mmm. guess no mandarin then
JetCat USA
In Memoriam
you've got some pretty significant moon lighting/ambient light on the tank or you've got a strange one there Julio, most Mandy's settle in shortly after lights off, turn white and form their slime cocoon for protection.
wrasseguy2
New member
i was in the same boat as davidryder..i have a 90 with at least 100lbs of live rock and had lots of pods...my tank had been running well over a year and the fuge also..and my mandrin looked really bad for quite sometime had tons of pods he just was not eating and i was just waiting for it to go any day..he has made a huge turn now and looks alot better and i see him eating pods all day..and a few month ago he started to eat frozen...i think it would be very hard to do in a 20 though wish i had an old pic of him but i got him when he was very small nice and fat now!!!
dohc97
Active member
Im not going to go against what everyone is saying, but in case you still want to try i read a couple articles about feeding and keeping mandarins in small tanks in tfh magazine. You might want to look through past issues i believe its in the December 06, January 07 or February 07 issues.
davidryder
Claris or Elliot?
wrasseguy2, that's a nice and fat mandarin ya got there 
Nice photo also!
My mandarin was all skin and bones and very inactive until I turned my sump into a refugium. My display refugium circulated through my sump and I think devoid of light and anything to attach to any copepods that made it to the sump just died. He gained a lot of weight but he still isn't where the one above is.
Nice photo also!
My mandarin was all skin and bones and very inactive until I turned my sump into a refugium. My display refugium circulated through my sump and I think devoid of light and anything to attach to any copepods that made it to the sump just died. He gained a lot of weight but he still isn't where the one above is.
ScarabRa
Member
Yes, you can "keep" them in a 15gal, you just need to be sure that they are fed enough. They feed all day long, so i would imagine they would cull the population down very quickly in a small tank.
The rear body/tail from above should be fat all the way back to the tail fin, and there stomach should be even to slightly protruding. (Just like in wrasseguy2's pic)
I do not have a problem, personally, with keeping him in the 20. But, I personally would recommend a very large fuge to house the main population. I have a 210 reef with a 75 fuge and my both tanks team with pods. But, there is a safe haven to protect a breeding population.
A~
A~
davidryder
Claris or Elliot?
I just can imagine a mandarin decimating the entire population of pods in a 20g tank before new ones have time to be introduced into the tank - even with the largest refugium attached. In a larger tank with a lot of land there would be more of a balance between how many pods the mandarin take out and how many are being introduced from the refugium. Also in a larger tank the pods would have the opportunity to reproduce in the tank as well as be supplied from the refugium.
I dunno... just one of those fish that you can definitely live without.
I dunno... just one of those fish that you can definitely live without.
i keep a small filter sponge (from an aquaclear mini) in my sump, outside of the refugium so it doesn't get snarled with chaeto. once every three days or so i take a quart cup of mix water and float the sponge in that. ten minutes later, the container is swarming with pods, the sponge goes back in the sump and i dump the quart into the display.
i have a mandarin and a mulleri, both fat and happy. there's about 140 lbs of live rock in the display, and a DSB, and i still feel a need to export pods from the sump. as far as i can tell, the mulleri doesn't sleep, just hunts 24 hours a day.
i have a mandarin and a mulleri, both fat and happy. there's about 140 lbs of live rock in the display, and a DSB, and i still feel a need to export pods from the sump. as far as i can tell, the mulleri doesn't sleep, just hunts 24 hours a day.
