Copepod farm for my Mandarin Goby

[ReefRealm]

Hello Reefers,

My name is Ryan. This is my first post. I appreciate all the support and positive feedback this community provides.

Anyway so here is the plan. I want to keep a mandarin goby in a 40 gallon AIO cube. I understand that the goby will exhaust the copepod population in this little tank in weeks.

So I have a plan. I am going to start a little 10 gallon tank that will be a copepod farm. I am going to place either 8 baseball size rocks in the farm, or maybe 8 little 3d printed cubes that have lots of surface area for copepods to hang out on. Then... every 3 days place a new rock/printed pod cube in the display tank with the goby, and take the old one out, and put it back in the copepod farm.

I currently have a couple pieces of live rock, a couple sponge filters, some small rubble, a ball of chaeto, and 1 of the 8 printed copepod cubes.

Ok, time to pick apart my idea. Please be critical. Please give ideas. I want the mandarin to be a FAT and healthy mandarin.

Also, any tips on keeping the copepod farm going would be great. The info out there is not very defined... specifically feeding phytoplankton. Like, adding till the water is a tinted green seems like a rather loose feeding regimen.

 

[DHill6]

Get a mandarin from Biota, they’re already eating pellets and the pair that I have also eat frozen. I also put Tisbe pods in every once in awhile. They definitely go after LRF nano blend and TDO pellets.

 

[ReefRealm]

Get a mandarin from Biota, they’re already eating pellets and the pair that I have also eat frozen. I also put Tisbe pods in every once in awhile. They definitely go after LRF nano blend and TDO pellets.

Oh dang, that sound quite a bit easier than the path I have laid out for myself! I have a yellow tang from Biota. I will check out their mandarins. Thanks for the advice!

 

[ReefRealm]

Get a mandarin from Biota, they’re already eating pellets and the pair that I have also eat frozen. I also put Tisbe pods in every once in awhile. They definitely go after LRF nano blend and TDO pellets.

Oh dang, that sound quite a bit easier than the path I have laid out for myself! I have a yellow tang from Biota. I will check out there mandarins. Thanks for the advice!

 

[RoseQuatics]

Hey Ryan,

Sounds like a great idea and I'm sure any derivative of copepod farming will work well for your Mandarin!

Do you have sand/rock in your 40g? Both sand and rock will help with maintaining a 'reservoir' of copepods.

I think you can start off with placing two of the copepod cubes and replace every week - giving you a full rotation of your eight cubes roughly every month.

In terms of feedings, I like to use Phytofeast from Reef Nutrition. Follow the feeding directions on the bottle to start and after two weeks, check to visibly see if your copepod population is thriving. There's nothing but copepods in the 10g (from what it sounds like) so you wouldn't need that much phyto... just a daily dose amount according to the bottle's directions and adjust from there:)

To me, the tinted green water feeding seems like a set and forget type of regimen .

The last thing I'll say is I would also feed phyto to the 40g. Might as well maintain that reserve too!

 

[ReefQuestCorals]

I use reef roids every 2-3 days to feed my pod population in my 29 nano cube, works great and they grow like crazy. My target mandarin has gained weight since I got him lol Ill take a small pinch out of the bag and just release it in front of the power head.

But of course if one isnt willing to be on top of this and stops feeding the pod population then the mandarin would starve. You can tell when I skip 1 day, the pods on the glass will start becoming more scarce.

 

[Jackalope12]

I use reef roids every 2-3 days to feed my pod population in my 29 nano cube, works great and they grow like crazy. My target mandarin has gained weight since I got him lol Ill take a small pinch out of the bag and just release it in front of the power head.

But of course if one isnt willing to be on top of this and stops feeding the pod population then the mandarin would starve. You can tell when I skip 1 day, the pods on the glass will start becoming more scarce.

Question for you. I have been dumping about 1 gal of pods per week in my 90 gal with green mandarin.

I have been super busy at work last 2 months so not much time to enjoy fish watching. Well yesterday I searched the rocks for mandarin and the fish had grown probably 200 to 250% and was chubby

Is it possible to give mandarin to many pods??

 

[W31Olds]

You could also try a WC mandarin. The one I have now can be target fed and will eat TDS Small pellets (slightly crushed) or adult frozen brine shrimp. I had Pods in my QT Tank until he ate all of them and then seemed comfortable enough to accept other foods. The only problem is that they need multiple feeding everyday.