*sigh* i had to do it...

Ate from the pipette? WOW awesome..
I bought one bottle of pods and seeded my fuge and tank.. I think i need more since redoing my sump though. Think i lost some pods in the changeover

 

That is one beautiful fish!
I want one once my tank is established

 

i was totally blown away. i figured that it would take a week or so for him to stop running away from the pipe but he must have been able to smell the goodies. i know all my fish freak out when i put cyclops in the tank so i think that paired with a little garlic to sweeten the mix was the ticket. i just have to be really careful not to waste too much food when i feed him or else i have a bigger algae problem than i already have...

 

I miss my fish that used to eat out of my hand.
I think my chromis would at this point..but nothing else.

 

you think it would fit in my 10 gallon he and my panther grouper might get along nicely? lol jk jk jk jk

i love those guys. too bad i dont have the right size tank for one

 

to tell the truth, i don't think i do either. i've got 80+ lbs of rock and rock is more important than tank size, IMHO, but i also have a Sixline munching a few pods. hopefully i've got enough to sustain this guy for another year or so, my wife doesn't know it yet but when we move back to iowa i'm using that as an excuse to upgrade tanks. you know, "since everything is already out of the tank, i'm half there..." hehehe

 

I would like a mandrin also but how do you know if there are enough pods in the tank to sustain one? I can see them moving around in my tank a little during the day. about 2 hrs after the lights go out I can turn on a flash light and shine it in the tank and it looks like there are at least a 100 or more that I can see moving around in the tank and on the SB

 

I bought a green spot a few weeks ago. Mine was really skinny when I got him. So skinny that his stomach was depressed and you can see some kind of bone running down his sides. I was worried that he wouldn't find enough to eat since I wasn't seeing as many pods in my tank as I once had. My fuge, on the other hand, is full of them. Anyway, this guy goes around looking at the rock and pecking at it all day. I never see anything there but he must be getting something because he's getting FAT.

 

i have heard the bigger the tank the better for the mandarin, the rock and macro algae are also a great help in keeping your pod population up. i hate to burst your bubble but from first hand experience and from other accounts i have heard from frozen foods and other substitutes for their natural diet of pods just dont give them the same level of nutrition as the pods themselves do. i kept a mandarin in a 20 gallon and he was trained on frozen brine and ate well, but after about three months he withered away and died. he wiped out the entire pod population in two days in my tank so he had to rely on the brine. the brine just didnt have the nutritition and he didnt pull through. this was by far my biggest loss and saddest day of fish keeping to date. judging by the amount of rock you have i would guess you would be alright, but that six-line would worry me a bit. i would definitly say add pods to keep your population up. mandarins are on the hunt for pods 24/7 so they can really destroy your population fast. good luck with your mandarin! i loved mine, still really bummed he died... hope this helps.

 

oh man he is beautiful, i'm very jealous