A healthy copepod population/scooter blenny

[Dorkel Marine 1]

A big thanks to the two people who gave their input on the skimmer (yes or no) debate. I'm still deciding. A read a couple of articles where the aquarists used air driven skimmers on smaller tanks. They're apparently not as pricy. A few articles suggest that if its only softcoral then its pretty apparent that many people have success with skimmerless tanks. However the people who have the other corals anenomoes and so on all say you must have a protein skimmer because they want to decide what their coral get to eat. Therefore they want their water nutrient free. And also the hard coral come from areas where the water is very clean. So I'm starting off with no skimmer. After the sand bed is in and the rock in place and a good chunk of time has passed then i may put in an air driven skimmer. And who knows what lies ahead. But hey I actually had a different question. Rearing a healthy copepod population. I am just enamoured by scooter blennies. However the guy at J&L says I would run out of food natural food after awhile in a 30 gal. tank. So I've heard about pod piles. Has anyone got any info on this and any succes. I want a scooter real bad and i am very partial to Mandarins. Oh? another question. Anyone ever had a hawkfish in a small tank. I run of at the mouth. Thanx in advance. Happy reefin.
ps. I'm interested in the next meeting.Please let me know or where would I check to find out.

[AJ_77]

Hi,

As for the Mandarin, please check out this thread from another hobbyist board. (http://www.aquariumhobbyist.com/forum/gobies/messages/172.html) And the followup to it.

And some others:
http://www.reefcentral.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=85526&highlight=Mandarin

http://www.reefcentral.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=66503&highlight=Mandarin

http://reefs.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=9874&highlight=mandarin

You'll find many threads of this nature that advise against a Mandarin, especially before the tank is well-established at about a year.

From what I've heard of J&L they would likely steer you away from one as well.

AJ

[ 30 May 2002, 09:06: Message edited by: AJ_77 ]

[reefburnaby]

Hi,

A mandarin fish is fairly hard to keep if you aren't aware of its requirements. Its a pod eating criters and some like to eat flatworms. So, if you have a flatworm infestation...it might stay alive by eating those guys. Since most of us don't have this problems, you'll need a setup to re-generate pods fairly quickly. So, you'll need areas that fish can't get access to (i.e. refugium or stacked boulders) so that pods have an area to themselves. You'll also need to feed you pods more often (i.e. feed the substrate) to regenerate the pods.

When you buy a mandarain, make sure it is a very very healthy specimen. It has to be nice and fat.

If you perform the necessary preparations and understand your animal, then it is possible to keep a mandarin for a long time.

Victor.