How can I tell if my tank has enough copepods for Mandarin?

[Blake423]

I lost a mandarin not too long ago, she were not eating frozen food, I assumed she were starve to death because I didn't see any fish picked on her and I can constantly saw her swimming around and looking for food.

My tank is 255L and has a refugium and used dry porous rock to set up.
I put a bottle of live copepods in my refugium after I set up my tank.
Fish list: a clownfish, a flame hawk, a blue tang, a bristletooth tang and a ,coral beauty. I don't think they are copepods eater.

But back then my tank is about 1-2 months old. Now it is about 4-5 months old now.
I don't want to go and purchase a bottle of live copepods constantly to feed her.
Is it mature enough to house a mandarin?
How can we tell if a tank has enough copepods for a mandarin?

Thanks

 

[ZoWhat]

Seed your tank with Pods and feed phyto for about 3mos.... then and only then try another mandarin

Horse goes in front of cart....

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[Blake423]

Seed your tank with Pods and feed phyto for about 3mos.... then and only then try another mandarin

Horse goes in front of cart....

Copepods Archives

Browse our selection of premium live copepod cultures including tigriopus, tisbe, apocyclops & mutli-species mixes. Free shipping $39+, 100% Live Guarantee

www.algaebarn.com

That's a good idea. Just wondering if there is any visible way to confirm there is plenty of copepods in the tank?

 

[N.Sreefer]

That's a good idea. Just wondering if there is any visible way to confirm there is plenty of copepods in the tank?

Skip scraping your glass until a little film algae builds on it then count the number of copepods/munnids per square inch on the glass. If they're all over the glass you have plenty.

 

[Blake423]

Skip scraping your glass until a little film algae builds on it then count the number of copepods/munnids per square inch on the glass. If they're all over the glass you have plenty.

When I lost my first mandarin, there are quite a lot of white tiny dot on my glass if I don't clean my glass for 4-5 days or so...not sure if those white dots are copepods or not.

 

[N.Sreefer]

When I lost my first mandarin, there are quite a lot of white tiny dot on my glass if I don't clean my glass for 4-5 days or so...not sure if those white dots are copepods or not.

Grab a cheap magnifying glass or (more expensive) a jewelers loop. Makes seeing the little buggers alot easier. You can use some of them in combination with your phone to take a close up without the fuzzyness of zooming in. Sorry for your loss, start dosing phyto and you'll speed the population growth up. I don't see the point in buying copepods I never have and I always end up with a stable population by the one year mark.

 

[dk2nt9]

That's a good idea. Just wondering if there is any visible way to confirm there is plenty of copepods in the tank?

This is a full bodied fish, needing a lot of food daily, few pods shouldn't solve the problem. The visible indicator vill be full or sunken mandarin's belly.

Before getting a fish, consider readily available backup as bottled live pods (expensive) and try to wean him to a dry food. Melev's Mandarin Diner method worked for me, with scooter dragonets in the tank, showing mandarin dragonet that this is a food. It took a lot of time for him to figure this out.

 

[Jay'sReefBugs]

All great info Posted on here ! Can't stress enough the key of phyto dosing to help get that copepod population up and running

 

[eggplantparrot]

Instead of passively watching a mandarin possibly starve in your tank, why not take steps towards actively feeding it.

Culturing phyto and pods isn't hard. White worms are even easier, and if nothing else, baby brine shrimps work great too.