Oop... what do I do?

[five.five-six]

To make a short story long, about a month ago my wife and I stopped in a LFS and my wife finds this mandarin goby which she really wants. I explane to her that it's really a dragonet and while I have seen Copepods in our 135 SPS dominated, it's a newer tank and the chaeto section is small. I figure happy wife, happy life and that fish will have a better shot in our tank than 99% of the other tanks it might find itself in. It's fat and happy today.


So there is another LFS we go to and in one of the displays is a red scooter blenny that my 12-year old son really wants. Every few weeks we stop by on a sunday and the owner isn't there but just to humor my son the salesman sticks the net in and makes a show of trying to catch it for him without really disturbing the tank.

Yesterday was just such an occasion except this time the red scooter blenny jumped out of the tank. My son is extatic and proceeds to buy it. We get it home and acclimate it and in about an hour we find it buried in the sand. I decide to read about it and see if this is normal behavior and what I find out is that it's actually a ruby red dragonet.... trying to survive on a already taxed coeopod population.

I went to alagae barn and ordered 10k mixed Copepods and some phytoplankton to feed them but can I really keep 2 dragonet in such a small and new tank with just a few fists full of chaeto?

 

[Dmorty217]

You can if either you train one to eat prepared foods or put a secondary refugium on the tank. Not sure if that is even feasible with your setup? They do make HOB refugiums, if space is limited. The other option is buying pods all the time

 

[sde1500]

Could set up a pod culture tank. I have a couple running in my basement. Culture and feed them phyto, then every few weeks pull a ton out and add to the DT.

 

[MuShu]

In addition, set up some rubble piles in your display tank to give the in-tank pods a place to hide and breed.

 

[BlueMoods]

Try frozen bloodworms, my scooter loves them and, comes to the syringe for targeted feeding.

That get him about half of his food, reducing the load he places on the pods, which in a nano tank, I need to do.