Stocking Question-Room for One More ?

[joegoersch]

I currently have a 120 gallon DT and 40 gallon sump/refugium. Water parameters are pretty good. Nitrates hovering around 5. My system just turned 1 yr.

I currently have 11 fish (see below) and wondering if I have room for a mandarin. Most of the fish except for the foxface are pretty small.

I have a lot of LR in the DT and fuge.

Do you think a mandarin would be o.k. to add ?

1 royal gramma
2 purple firefish
3 starry blenny
4 one spot fox face
5 tail spot blenny
6 pajama cardinal
7 ocellarus clown fish
8 diamond goby
9 lawnmower blenny
10 and 11 zebra bar goby (2-a pair)
two blood shrimp
cleaner shrimp
green BTA two-just split
feather duster worm
snail clean up crew

 

[ImNotLion]

Do you have a good pod population?

 

[SweetTang]

I think that you can definitely handle one more fish, as far as bio-load goes. As the previous poster stated, you need a large pod population for the mandy...

 

[joegoersch]

I have a lot of LR and a lot of creepy crawlies in the fuge. I've tried spotting copepods specifically and have been entirely unsucessful. However when I take a drop of fuge water and look under microscope, I see a lot of creatures which seem to be pods...

 

[blanden.adam]

If you are planning on just allowing the mandarin to eat the live pods off your rock and aren't really feeding him specifically, he will barely even contribute to your bioload. If you are feeding him then that's a different story, but with a 120 if your pod population is large and stable, I think you could handle a mandarin no problems.

The thing about the microscope water is that most pods your mandarin would eat are benthic organisms, so you shouldn't get a ton of them in your tank water (another kind of copepod lives in the water column itself, but mandarins don't really look there for their food). However, I would bet if you have a fuge that was seeded with macro from a mature tank, you probly have benthic pods. Try shining a flashlight on some particularly gnarly rock in your DT after the lights have been out for an hour or so. Move quickly, because the pods will run, but I'll bet you see them.

 

[joegoersch]

Finally found pods ! I was doing a water change yesterday and scooping out water with a small plastic rectanngular box I had lying around for the purpose (? breeder box) and as I held that up to the light, saw a bunch of pods skitting about the glass. Oval and about the size of a (small font) period!

 

[worm5406]

They should look like pill bugs too....

At the end of this video has a copepod.

<iframe width="1280" height="720" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/kfugF2hVM8w" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

[blanden.adam]

Sounds like pods to me! Get your mandarin, easily one of my favorite fish! I went with ORA for sustainability and frozen food eating! Hooray for not tanking things out of the ocean!