The Mandarin Dragonet feeding question

Was wondering when do they feed? During the day time or night time? Because all my pods seems to come out to play into my display tank at night. Every morning when i come out.. theres plenty of pods crawling around.. my clowns enjoy them like crazy. Was thinking of getting a mandarin. And how do we keep these pods reproducing and growing?

 

mandarin eats 24/7 when they are active and swimming, at night time though they do go to sleep as well so unfortunately they don't feast on pods when they are all out..
to maintain a pod population, you would have to have a refugium for them to reproduce in without fish picking them off.. or another good idea is to stack some little rock piles at the back of your tank that your fish can't get into..

 

Yea, Thats where all my pods are coming from.. They're all in my refugium and somehow got suck from my return pump into my display tank every night. It seems like they only in my DT early morning, and by afternoon I don't see even one crawling on my glass. Was scare if I got a mandarin.. he'll starve cuz he be too busy sleeping.. lmao..haha

 

How big is your tank and how much live rock? How long has it been established?

 

I got a tall 15 gal nano with a 10 gal refugium.. Everything in my main tank and refugium is thriving perfectly. I only had the tank running since April. There is a 6 lb live rock in the refugium which seems to house millions of bacteria.with all kinds of macro algae surrounding it. The pods first appear in my refugium and somehow I got an entire community of different types of pods. The main tank has about 30- 40 lbs of live rock and they are all algae free. Water is crystal clear as can be. was wondering wat do these pods feed on? So I can maintain them in my tank as a food source for all my fish.

 

My Mandarin eat's all day and eat's brine and mysis in the evening...Make a pod farm in a 5 gallon tank and transfer some from time to time to DT
Danny

 

Feed them phyto plankton Get setup and ready before getting a Mandarin....this is not the easiest fish to keep....Study this one before you get one....

 

Will Do

 

I wouldn't put a manderin in the 15g. Too small and hasn't been established long enough. I had a manderin in a 55g that had been established for almost a year with about 60lbs of live rock and pleanty of pods and it destoyed all of them in a matter of weeks. They never stop eating. I would watch him swoop down and peck a pod every 2 seconds, I eventually gave him to a fried with a 125g tank out of fear he would starve.

 

Dang... didn't know they were eating machines......