Hungry Mandarin....Copepods Needed

How's about you feed arcti pods? Mine took them immediately, as long as there is flow it can be fooled. What makes you think their are no pods in your tank?

 

Surprised

I keep hearing that they are very hard to get to feed.
This gives me a little more hope

 

start up again

I had an bad algae problem for a while.
Had move the tank from out of state
Brought some water - much was lost on trip.
Rock and sand had to sit longer than was good
So much of live may have not made it
Did add some new live and and live rock
Trying to save all fish and coral I transported.
They are all still alive- do not want to lose them if can help it

 

Everything I have been reading says that mandarin dragonettes eat copepods and amphipods??????

 

You will find that in this hobby, there is sometimes lots of speculation. I'd trust inwall75.

 

I had a mandarin n got him eating frozen blood worms rather quickly. Maybe it was lucky utterances soaking it garlic helped

75 Gal. 90+ lbs. LR. Rebuilding beings in July after devastating ICH outbreak...

Sent from my Tundabolt using Tapatalk

 

I got pods on Reefcleaners to start my fuge. It was i think 11.99 for 300+

 

They do eat amphipods.....BABY amphipods. Amphipods eat copepods and grow faster as a result. In other words, if you buy a batch of amphipods, there will be some food for your mandarin at first. The ones that are too big to eat will compete with your mandarin for the copepod population.

 

reefs2go has 500 for 19.99

 

So, $20 for a one days supply? That's only approx. $7300 a year LOL. In all seriousness though Mandarins do go through a lot of pods, I can't say how many, estimates are all over the board, but a few hundred a day would be on the conservative side.

The pods will reproduce, so you only need to make up the difference between what is available in the tank already vs what the mandarin eats. That could still be a lot though. Some of the pods available are very slow to reproduce, others faster. If your going to innoculate your system with pods, do your homework and make sure you get a species that is reproduces quickly and not a one that reproduces slowly and may out compete the ones that reproduce quickly.

Once you establish pods, it's important to keep them going. The best food sources are phytoplankton, however, daily additions of phytoplankton will fowl your water quickly. Dosing silicates to encourage diatoms is an excellent way to encourage pods, as the diatoms are alive and will not pollute your system. Unfortunately, other than DarkEarth (hehe), no one can keep phytoplankton going in their systems for any given time.

Also, both diatoms and phytoplankton can produce chemicals to inhibit copepod reproduction. The interesting thing though is these chemicals appear to only be produced if there is a homogeneous supply of phyto or diatom species, so there is evidence that a "mixed meal", with a variety of species can prevent this. In other words, there is stil a lot of active research in this area, but it appears it is a survival mechanism for the species. The species won't bother spending energy on production of these chemicals unless the species is in danger within a given area of water. So, if your serious about mandarins it may not be a bad idea to "cautiously" add a phyto mix and possibly some sodium silicate as described here: Feature Article: Silica In Reef Aquariums — Advanced Aquarist's Online Magazine