I have a tank that has been cycled since April that is a 120g dt. I have about a 10 g fuge area in my sump that has a nice healthy cheato wad in it. I have seen numerous bristleworms, pods, snails, and even small star fish living in my fuge. I was even lucky enough to catch sight of a few pods in my DT at one point. With that said, how do you know when and if you have enough pods to support a mandarin?
Mandarins and how many pods?
- Thread starter bamf25
- Start date
MikeandNicole
New member
You are getting very close, generally the recomendation is over a year to make sure you really have the population to keep one. You have a correct sized tank for one and you have a fuge which will always help you succeed. Mandarins mow through pods from the point the wake up to the point they go to sleep, so the question of how many is really an almost infinite supply. This is why a fuge where they can constantly reproduce and a big enough tank helps immensly in their survival rate.
You can look to get some more, not sure where you are in central jersey but I know Trop and reef 2 reptiles will get pods in that you can add.
You can look to get some more, not sure where you are in central jersey but I know Trop and reef 2 reptiles will get pods in that you can add.
stingythingy45
New member
Is the reason you have such a small refugium cause of room constraints?
A larger fuge would be ideal.
A larger fuge would be ideal.
I got the tank used, and the sump/fuge comb is the largest that will fit under the stand, and leave any room to work. The fuge may be slightly larger than 10 g it maybe 15g, but that is it. The fuge takes up about 1/3 of a 40g sump. Currently it has a dsb, cheato, and a fair sized piece of live rock in it.
I've had great success with setting up a 50g DT and a 25gal sump with podes and have a thriving Mandarin. He eats all day and I always see pods climbing all over the glass in both the DT and the sump.
I filled the sump with rock rubble, a couple balls of chaeto, and a few clusters of empty barnacles. The chaeto already had copepod populations in it, but I added two bottles of Algagen copepods while the return pump was off. I let the sump sit for abotu 1 hour before kicking the return pump back on.
I keep an eye on the population and make sure I always see copepods in both the DT and the sump - so far, so good. The Mandarin eats all day and I still see the little buggers and it seems their numbers are increasing nicely.
The main thing to look for is population crashes where all of a sudden most of your copepods die off, at which point you'd want to replinish them, and figure out what might have caused the crash.
I filled the sump with rock rubble, a couple balls of chaeto, and a few clusters of empty barnacles. The chaeto already had copepod populations in it, but I added two bottles of Algagen copepods while the return pump was off. I let the sump sit for abotu 1 hour before kicking the return pump back on.
I keep an eye on the population and make sure I always see copepods in both the DT and the sump - so far, so good. The Mandarin eats all day and I still see the little buggers and it seems their numbers are increasing nicely.
The main thing to look for is population crashes where all of a sudden most of your copepods die off, at which point you'd want to replinish them, and figure out what might have caused the crash.
I forgot to mention that I occassionally take out the barnacle clusters and put them in the DT so that the copepods that are hiding in there get a chance to get out in to the main DT - even though I know the return pump supplies a steady stream, I just wanted to make sure some were getting in to the main tank.
