Pods for Mandarins

[RGS88]

I was at a LFS on the weekend looking at Mandarins. I know that Mandarins eat/consume pods (copepods I assume)... and know that most Mandarins exclusively live off of pods and nothing else. That being said the LFS said that I can populate my tank with pods (I have a newer tank). So, what Brand or type are you adding to your tank (if any)? I had a quick look at J&L's site as a reference and saw several kinds including Reef Nutrition Tigger-Pods Live Copepods, and Reef Nutrition Arcti-Pods Premium Concentrate, and Argent Freeze-Dried Cyclop-eeze, etc. Are these any good... and if so which particular one is the best? Are any pod additives available locally here in Edmonton from a LFS, or only online? Does a person have to keep dosing this (daily/weekly/monthly), or are these a one-time dose?

[doch]

I'm pretty sure that I've heard good things about the Tigger pods. I believe that Steve at Red Coral was saying that he either gets or can get them. As for dosing, I'd say dose more often at first, and then once they are established, slow down. Feed phyto, and have a fuge or some other area that they can safely breed without becoming prey. They will then trickle into your display.

[naesco]

I was at a LFS on the weekend looking at Mandarins. I know that Mandarins eat/consume pods (copepods I assume)... and know that most Mandarins exclusively live off of pods and nothing else. That being said the LFS said that I can populate my tank with pods (I have a newer tank). So, what Brand or type are you adding to your tank (if any)? I had a quick look at J&L's site as a reference and saw several kinds including Reef Nutrition Tigger-Pods Live Copepods, and Reef Nutrition Arcti-Pods Premium Concentrate, and Argent Freeze-Dried Cyclop-eeze, etc. Are these any good... and if so which particular one is the best? Are any pod additives available locally here in Edmonton from a LFS, or only online? Does a person have to keep dosing this (daily/weekly/monthly), or are these a one-time dose?

As well as pods, mature tank water will help with your success. A mature tank is also required for keeping some species of SPS.
So consider waiting until your tank is 9 months old. You can help increasing the pod population by.
1. adding a refugium.
2. not purchasing other fish that compete with the mandarin for food.
3. pile smooth stones in the back of your tank that become homes for them. (these pod piles also provide film algae for kole tangs.)
4. buying some pods at this time.

I would also look at ordering in a mated pair of mandarins when you are ready as your tank size can accommodate 2.
Thanks for asking.

[ScubaSteve]

I actually had a discussion with one of the scientists at the Vancouver Aquarium last year about this. He said that Tigger pods (the correct scientific name is slipping my mind at the moment) are a large, temperate, predatory pod; meaning they can and will hunt down your smaller existing pods for food, don't live that long in our tank conditions and are better suited for larger fish. He went on to say that they made the mistake once of feeding tigger pods to a batch of fry and the tigger pods ate all the fry! This is info from him not me, so I can't really debate this fact.

But in light of this, my favorite way of feeding pods to mandarins is patience, time and design. Built a Pod House, just a pile of rubble they can hide in, in the back of your tank somewhere and squirt some food intone pile every once in a while. Get some chaeto or live rock that has a ton of pods in it already to seed your tank. Give it a couple months, and when you see a ton of little pods bombing around at night, you're good to go.

One thing to keep in mindif you go the refugium route: you won't be getting many adult size pods from the fuge into the display. The large pods often don't make it through the pumps in one piece unless you have a HOB fuge where they can just flow in. I experimented with this a while back when trying to decide on a system configuration. Pod + pump = pod soup. If you are going through a pump from your refugium you will be getting larval pods, so you're essentially constantly seeding the tank.

[ScubaSteve]

And I second Naesco on not having competing fish. In my new tank I'm not doing a mandarin because I would like to have a leopard wasse which will compete with the mandarin for food.

[dc4]

Tigger pods are useless, Ive bought a few bottles before and they dont last a day in the tank, even after adding at night and in the sump. The main issue is that they do not hide and are eaten up by everything else in the tank and dont survive long enough to reproduce. I have used a few bottles of reef pods copepods (tisbe?) to seed my new tank when I transfered to my new tank and now my pair of mandarins are doing great. Dont waste your money on tigger pods for mandarins though, most of the other tankmates will get to them before the mandarins do.

[daniella3d]

Tiger pods won't survive in our aquarium very long. It's a total waste of money.

The best way to handle a mandarin is to have pods to begin with..so wait until you do. Buy cheato and put a refugium or something similar where they can reproduce. They need phytoplankton to survive.

Then you get a new mandarin and put it in QUARANTINE! while in quarantine with liverock and pods, train it to eat something else. Fish roe (caplan eggs) those orange eggs that are found on sushi is excellent for them, and live white worms which they go nuts for.

I have 2 mandarins now, my first male was killed by a yellow tang, and all 3 of them ate live white worms and loved them.

My male now is eating spirulina brine, live white worm and pods. I enrich the white worms by adding Selcon to the milk and bread I feed the worms. I have been feeding my madarins with this for 2 years and my copperband has been eating these worms almost exclusively for a year now.

No way you're going to lose a mandarin from starvation if you give it live white worms. I have never seen a fish refuse that food.

You buy a live culture and get it going...it's easy, good and cheap food for healthy fish.

[doch]

Hmmm... where would one buy a live white worm culture? How big are the worms?

[daniella3d]

It's not a good time of the year to have one shipped to you but in spring you could probably find someone how has some and willing to ship some to you.

Google live white worms for info on them and how to culture them. It's quite easy. They are about 1 inch for the adult, much smaller for the babies so just about any fish can eat them.

Hmmm... where would one buy a live white worm culture? How big are the worms?

[SeaHorse_Fanatic]

My sump/refugiums are usually overrun with pods and live mysis shrimp. Even my little 5g holding tank for Hawaiian volcano shrimp is crawling with pods and mysis. I usually keep balls of chaeto and other macroalgaes in each system (whether in the display or in the sump/refugiums) and so when I transfer rock and stuff from my sump/refugium into a new tank, it seeds that new tank with pods/mysis. I guess I've been very fortunate since it sounds like most reef tanks have little or no pod/mysis population. Been thinking of tearing down the little 5g but haven't mainly because of its unexpectedly high biodiversity. I don't see the Volcanos all that much but the free pods/mysis are overrunning the tank. Just left the tank alone and bam, population explosion. I guess it helps that there are no fish in there any more and the Volcanos are algae eaters.

[ensquire]

Hmmm... where would one buy a live white worm culture? How big are the worms?

Try Ken at BWA