Mandarin vision question.

[vikubz]

When my mandarin is cruising about the live rock picking pods, does she actually see the pods or is she 'grazing' and gets the pods randomly? The pods on the glass look remarkably tiny to me, but they are much larger relative to a mandarin, so maybe she sees them crawling around?

Thanks,
Mark

 

[snorvich]

She sees them. Both leopard wrasses and mandarins have incredible eyesight for copepods, etc.

 

[Haxsaw]

So maybe your can help me because I am still not quite sure what I am looking for with copepods. I saw something that looked a bit like a brine shrimp floating around today. Is that a copepod?

 

[Midwest_Killa]

prolly an amphipod my friend.

 

[AquaReeferMan]

Here is a picture of a copepod on melevsreef
http://www.melevsreef.com/id/copepod2.html

Also Check this section out, theres a lot to look at.
http://www.melevsreef.com/id/

 

[sanchoy]

so when a mandarin is picking at things on the rocks.. they see them.. and eating.. good

 

[Haxsaw]

Yep, after seeing the pics, it was an amphipod. So, since they are so small, how do you know when you have a healthy population of copepods?

 

[davocean]

Copepods are small, but you can see them, about the size of a grain of sand.
If you have chaeto and move it, you will see them scurrying about.
Mandy's will eat amphipods as well.

 

[grabthereef]

you can also look for pods on your glass, but yeah, chaeto helps get populations up. I could imagine that mandarins have remarkable close range eyesight.