Pods and such

[jrnannery]

Hey guys, can the stuff that lives in chaeto survive a trip through a maxijet powerhead? If I were to shake a piece of chaeto into my rear compartment on my BioCube, which is now completely void of sponges and floss, would a significant number of those little critters survive being sucked into the intake and thrown past the impeller to come to rest in the bottom of the display section...or in a fish's belly?

Really wanna know the answer to this one, and am willing to experiment to find out. I would need the chaeto from one of you, though. Something just crawling with those little bugs. Creepy.

Anyway, Merry Christmas to all of you. Have a good Santa night.

Thanks
Richard

[Mr Cob]

sure...but it's not needed if you are simply trying to seed your tank with pods. Put them anywhere in your system and they will eventually end up everywhere.

One of the main purposes of a refugium is so that tigerpods, isopods, mysis, amphipods etc can live and breed without any predators and from time to time they get sucked up into the return pumps and sent to the display to feed fish and corals.

I can send a bag of chaeto out on our next local pickup on Wednesday if you want a bag (free). Just PM me if so.

[jrnannery]

The reason I asked is that I have removed all the junk out of the back area of the tank...no mechanical filtration, none of that stuff...and have installed an algal turf scrubber in that middle compartment. From all that I have read, ATSs are pod factorys, and that suits me fine. I've had this sand and rock in my tank, constantly running, since 2006, so, as you can imagine there is quite an abundance of little critters running around, but I am always ready for more. I would love to have a mandarin eventually, so I really want that natural food source. If he develops a taste for what's fed, fine, all the better.

Anyhoo, yes, I would love some chaeto, as I want to install a small chaeto bed under the ATS.