Pics Of my 30gallon one month after set up

You would be surprised of how many pods they could polish down even in a larger tank. You should just play it by how many you see in the display according to how often to put some in the display. PM packleader or view his tank thread to see how he is breeding them because it can get pretty expensive ordering them all the time. He has a pretty cool set up and it is cheap to make.

 

Your tank is looking good by the way!

 

thanks alot, its been alot of work

 

You should've waited before adding so many fish but in any case check out the copepod thread under inverts.

http://www.3reef.com/forums/inverts/increasing-copepod-population-tank-56779.html

 

I thought that was the point of buying all that cured live rock and live sand.. I hope everything goes well if not I will just start over and learn a lesson...

 

What point?

I have 130lbs Uncured Live rock. I never buy cured rock. But most people probably disagree with my method. In my opinion biodiversity in a closed marine system creates stability. There is no way you can achieve this by cured or base rock alone, however Live sand does provide some of this.

 

I meant that the point of buying the live sand and live rock was to have a stable tank faster so I could add live stock pretty fast.

 

looks good! your tang acts like my 2 clowns! so shy when i approach... hopefully after a few weeks they'll get better

 

Looks good, Your hitch-hiker looks like a type of green star polyps(good thing). Luna

 

Ok i see what you mean. Yes you can add live stock. I was just talking about increasing your copepod population to support the Green Mandarin.

It's hard to do that with so many fish because the fish will constantly snack on them, especially the clowns, they love to eat them. The copepods go through several stages and they need to be sort of left alone for a while to complete their life cycle.

You can try a couple of different things. You can get a very small tank lets say a 15 gallon or a 10 gallon. Takecouple of porous pieces of live rock out of your tank and put them in the new small tank. Then seed the tank with copeods and put a powerhead and a small light on it. A cheap 5100K or 6700K light from local store will do. You will need a small heater and also. Then every six weeks you can harvest the live rock from the small tank and put it in your display tank. Take another rock out of your display tank and put in the small tank.

All this will cost you around 40 bucks if you shop in the right places.

Another method is that, buy a bottle of copepods and add them at night. The next day do not turn the lights on. Leave them off for 48 hours. You should see a copepod bloom in a couple of weeks if you leave some algae on the glass. This is probably the cheapest method and i have tired it with success.