Copepods

[Bug_Power]

Anyone want to get some copepods? I'm getting a madarin and want to have a nicely stocked tank for him once he gets there. $22 a bottle but if you order 4 bottles they are $60ish. Just wanted to see if anyone wanted to get in and save everyone some cash. Willing to meet 1/2 from corpus to handoff!

[Reef69]

Those pods bottles dont work..

[cpreefguy]

+1, you would probably get more in a nice sized chunk of chaeto

[Reef69]

Yep, Sean is right. ..www.ipsf.com/ :skeezy

[Ram_Puppy]

oooorrr... you could grab cheato from someone in MAAST w/o shipping, and most likely at very little to no expense.

I tried ordering from IPSF twice, never was contacted back. pitty.

[GaryP]

Without a refugium, the mandarin will probably just polish off what you put in there and then be starving.

[Reef69]

Yep, he'll erradicate your tank's supply of pods in no time..they eat all day long..i mean ALL DAY LONG..

[jroescher]

If you have a refugium, will it generate enough pods to keep a mandarin happy? Or do you have to keep feeding it pods from somewhere else.

[Reef69]

you need a fuge to keep up with the demand..I would start a fuge and let it grow for A WHILE!..a few months maybe..then you can add ONE mandarin..

[Bug_Power]

I have a 30 gallon fuge. Just stalked it with some nice macro from one of our MarshReef's sponsors and LFS that I didn't know existed until today. Come to find out he's one of a few commercial macro-algae growers in the country. Exotic Aquatic on S.Staples Has a nice Mimic Octo and some other cool stuff. An AWSOME Peacock Mantis shrimp that is absolutly gorgeous! Decent prices except on the ONE piece I really wanted. A small frag of green tiped Aquacultured Hammer, it was 1-2" and $99 Kind high I thought.

[cpreefguy]

Yep, he'll erradicate your tank's supply of pods in no time..they eat all day long..i mean ALL DAY LONG..
That is, unless like Diego and I, you have a mandarin that accepts frozen food, which is probably about 1 in a million so....

[Bug_Power]

Well since I'm not going to win the lotto. I might as well go with the 1 and a million odds :) Just a question.....
I was down in Port Aransas about a month or so ago. I saw some drift wood and picked it up out of the water. I saw these, what looked like copepods, all over it. I scraped some off, but since i didn't know what it was I passed to make sure i wasn't introducing some odd parasite into my tank. Now after seeing pictures I'm 90% sure it was pods, and I could get 100's off this one log I saw out there. Is there anyone willing to go out there with me one weekend and search for peppermint shrimp and pods?

[taldrich13]

i'll be there this weekend and plan on looking for some peppermint shrimp and other odd creatures.

[Bug_Power]

winds look to be around 10mph friday and sat, night. Wave models show light seas, should be a good day for huning. ReefOne want's to go as well, ANYONE ELSE? Let me know when your going to be down here. Shoot me a call on my cell 361-288-0325 and we'll figure out a time to meet
rodney

[hammondegge]

[/quote]
That is, unless like Diego and I, you have a mandarin that accepts frozen food, which is probably about 1 in a million so....[/quote]

i think that the mysis eating mandarin may becoming more commmon. i have two in two different tanks that will eat the frozen food. are mandarins captively bred?

[Ram_Puppy]

I don't think very many captive bred mandarins are in the trade yet as it has only been I think a year or two since the green mandarin was successfullly reared, and only months since the psychadelic.

Please don't take a one in a million shot and risk getting a mandarin before your system is ready. These fish have a frighteningly high mortality rate in systems without refugiums. A refugium is not hard to set up at all, you can probably put together an adequate one for less than 100$.

[GaryP]

are mandarins captively bred?
Not that I have heard of.

Bug Power, We are planning a joint collecting trip with MARSH for this summer. We're trying to work out some other activities while we are down there. It should be a hoot.

[Bug_Power]

this summer? Should be HOT and a Hoot ;)

[GaryP]

Mark your calendar, July 15-16th. I'm pretty sure what you saw on the wood was probably copepods. That sounds like a natural habitat for them. They were probably feeding on the algae on the wood. Next time, try taking a magnifying glass with you when you are out collecting.

[TroyPham]

i've told this guy to hold up on getting some live items for his tank but he's like most people and has little patiance. haha.... slow down on stocking your tank..

[Bug_Power]

Man I should have kept them, No less then 100 of them I got off the wood. Got some spiny eurchins out there once, but it was COLD. I'll have to check again. So what would you say is a good fuge setup? I've got a 50gal tank that I have 30 gallons in. Divided into skimmer/overflow area then a sectioned off low flow fuge. I have about a 2-3" sandbed all from an established tank in there. And I just got a bag of macroalgea. Anything else you'd add?

[Reef69]

Light..(run it off during the day, on at night)..Buy some plant growing bulbs at HD, the algea will grow like crazy..

[Ram_Puppy]

Gary, there was an article in the latest edition of CORAL written by the first guy to succesfully rear mandarins (both kinds). pretty interesting read.

[GaryP]

Thanks, I'll look for it.

[Bug_Power]

Light..(run it off during the day, on at night)..Buy some plant growing bulbs at HD, the algea will grow like crazy..
Got 110w of T5's on the sump now! Will be pulling the Green "Death Star" out of the sump tomarrow. LFS want him he's about 18-24" as a show piece :)

[loans_n_fishes]

I actually did add a bottle of copepods, live sand and live rock to my tank when I first started. I let it sit for a month...no skimmer or filter just powerheads. I then added all of my other equipment and janitors. I have a mandarin (got him after only a couple of months of setup) and still have so many pods that the water is "dusty"! Apparently, dosing phyto helps them too. I wasn't planning on getting a mandarin until several months down the road, but my pod population was so HUGE! He is fat and happy. He may also be eating some of my frozen cyclopeez...but I am not sure.

[brewercm]

Light..(run it off during the day, on at night)..Buy some plant growing bulbs at HD, the algea will grow like crazy..


I run mine 24/7 and it works out great also, mine's in the garage where it doesn't bother anyone. There's been different things said about both ways so take each for what they are worth.

[taldrich13]

winds look to be around 10mph friday and sat, night. Wave models show light seas, should be a good day for huning. ReefOne want's to go as well, ANYONE ELSE? Let me know when your going to be down here. Shoot me a call on my cell 361-288-0325 and we'll figure out a time to meet
rodney

Sorry I didn't call you this weekend whie I was there. I accidentally left your number at home! I did, however, hang my MAAST T-shirt in the window of my car just in case you happen to be driving along the beach :lol The water was cold as heck but at least I got to try my new wetsuit 8)

[Ross]

They will breed, but its extremely hard to come by a tank raised mandarin because so few people have enough pods to support a breeding pair...

[Reef69]

..Yep.. I know mandarins spawn readily in aquariums..but havent heard of anybody raising fry..

[Bug_Power]

uhh mandarin secks, should look like a physcodellic trip!

[Bug_Power]

any of you guys buy from carlina.com looks like $6 or so a bottle, and says it's for a class of 30.