skinny mandarins

[Poor Boy]

Its been about a week since I added close to 3k copepods and my little mandarin seems to be getting skinnier and skinnier. Should I add another 2k and keep adding them?

[kkiel02]

I am not sure of your exact setup but you might want to let someone with a larger more established tank keep them until you can stabilize your pod population. If you can't find a home keep adding large amounts until you start seeing them in your tank.

[jcnkt_ellis]

You would need to feed a bottle of tiger pods or the likes daily for the mandarins. Free swimming pods do not last more then a day before they are dead from natural causes or from going through pump impellers.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[BBQHILLBILLY]

Maybe too late, being proactive is good, mandarins sometimes will eat peeled deveined tailess shrimp from heb.
cut a couple little pieces off and drop in your front display and see if that helps.

check your nitrates/phosphates too from all the dead pods, may need a sw change

[jcnkt_ellis]

When I was thinking of getting a mandarin for my nano I stumbled on this article:

http://www.tfhmagazine.com/details/articles/nano-mandarin-full-article.htm

He couldn't cultivate enough pods in his tank and ended up feeding capelin roe, the orange fish eggs on top of sushi, in order to keep his alive


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[moneytank]

There was a post, maybe was on here. Someone made a feeder for theirs. It was a small dish with a cut up piece of fish net over the lid. Then they used a small rigid airline tube that went into the small dish and out through the top of the tank. They would hatch baby brine shrimp and squirt them into the tube down into the small dish. The netting would keep the brine shrimp somewhat in the container. They said their mandarin would just hover over the netting waiting for the baby brine shrimp. It was a pretty cool and cheap idea.
Maybe you could do something like that. And once your mandarin gets used to eating from it you could slowly introduce pieces of frozen mysis with the baby brine shrimp until your mandarin gets used to the frozen mysis.

[Poor Boy]

thats interesting...

im going to stop by coral cave today and see if they have any tiger pods and later tonight ill look into constructing a feeding dish like you mentioned. thanks

[Big_Pun]

I've used ova many times with great success but you will have to feed them with a feeder like the kent marine on that extends. fish are smart and if you spot feed them constantly and they like the food they will come up when they see the feeder.

my first mandarin I had lived for 6 yrs. I got him on pellets very small size, he would tap the glass at feeding time for pellets. I just tossed pellets on him every time I saw him out.

http://youtu.be/MI0JydkvaD4

1:40 you will see him tap glass wanting food

http://youtu.be/cCY-5HV3-N0

[Poor Boy]

Ill check out the videos later, I'm on my phone. I did pick up close to 1500 copepods. I added around 1200 to the sump and tonight once the lights go out I'm going to turn off the pumps and let it sit then add the rest to the display tank. I know it takes about 2 weeks for the pods to start doing what they do and its been a little over a week since I added the first ones...

How could I turn my wet/ dry sump into a proper fuge? Maybe lose the bioballs and add some live sand and rock? Doing this I wouldn't need the filter sock, right?

[moneytank]

I would take out the bio balls and replace with live rock like you said. But do it slowly unless you already have good cured live rock. If not then maybe do it in quarters. Take one quarter of the bio balls out and replace with one quarter of live rock. Then wait a week or two and do the next quarter.

[moneytank]

http://www.maast.org/showthread.php?80226-DIY-Target-Feeder

[jcnkt_ellis]

You might want to try to culture some tigger pods as mentioned in here:

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2030920

Skip to post 18 and it continues on page 2 before going a different direction.

Short gist of it is all you need is a baking pan filled with salt water, a bottle of pods, and a bottle of phyto-feast and your pod population should double in the pan every four days

[Poor Boy]

hell yeah! thanks.

[Poor Boy]

just read through it now and i have a couple questions that were not answered.

i know they repopulate between the 4-6 day mark, but how long do i need to wait before i start scooping them out?

i read that one guy added 1/2 of the 8oz bottle of tiger pods to the tide pool and threw the rest back into the fridge. if im running 1 tide pool, how much of an 8oz bottle should i add?

someone had asked about transferring the pods from the TP to the display tank, but never received an answer. what is the best way to transfer them? maybe a turkey baster?

once the TP is fully populated and is ready to be transferred, how much do i add to my display tank and how often?

will the tiger pods eventually populate in the display tank/ sump on their own or will i always need to run a TP?

[jcnkt_ellis]

Ok, hopefully someone with mandarins will help chime in on the feeding routine.

You don't want to scoop out more then half of the pods of your tide pool at any one time in order to make sure you have enough left to reproduce in large quantities quickly.

The larger your initial population, the more babies you get, so I would pour in the whole bottle and feed well.

The whole point of running the tide pool is because you will never have enough pods in your tank to feed the mandarin. They will be quickly ate or out competed by larger pods in the system.

If you are keeping the salinity in the tide pool the same as the display, you should be able to scoop out pods with a cup and pour it straight in.



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Poor Boy]

makes sense. thanks.

[Poor Boy]

I was taken a look at my sump today and I noticed about 5 copepods crawling around on the side wall. I'm hoping this is a good sign. Ill prob add a couple thousand more and let nature do the rest.

[Kristy]

Did you pile any LR rubble in the corners of the tank to create some good environments for pod growth in the display? That is one of my preferred tips.

[Poor Boy]

i have about 3-4 pounds directly under the water drip. i can move it around tonight. thanks.

[Kristy]

Just to be clear, I am talking about in your DISPLAY tank where the mandarins are living. You want the little bitty piles of rubble, live rock pieces that are smaller than a golf ball, piled up in the corners. It encourages the pods to have a place to live, grow, reproduce in the tank and builds your numbers. I would see my mandarin hunt at the edge of the pod piles so I knew it was working.

[Kristy]

How are they doing? If you don't have the live rock rubble, we could give you some empty snail/hermit shells from our tank that have lots of pods (great spaces for those guys to breed/hide/live) and you could pile them up in the corners of your tank.