So mandarins, their pod consumption is no joke...

[living_tribunal]

About 6-7 months ago, I decided I would start preparing for a mandarin. I knew they consumed an exorbitant amount of pods, I guess I just didn't know how much.

I set up two external pod cultures, 1 for tisbe and 1 for tigger and have kept them running for the last 6 months, trying to beef up the population in my tank as much as possible. My weekly pod harvests amount to ~20,000 total, 10,000 per culture. I have several heavy pod consuming fish so increasing this output has been my primary focus.

Last week, I finally decided to pull the trigger and got my baby mandarin.

I'm writing this post to put things into perspective, namely to those who 'plan on teaching a mandarin how to eat frozen foods'. To say these guys consume a lot of pods is an understatement, these guys consume more pods than you can fathom. My mandarin is only .75", yesterday was only his first day in my tank, I watched him for a couple of hours and he consumes about 5 pods every minute on a conservative basis. That amounts to 300 pods per hour, 3,600 pods per day with a 12 hour photoperiod. I can only imagine how much this consumption rate will ramp up as he grows. I am starting to think even 2 external cultures with a 15 gallon fuge in my sump is not enough.

There is nothing wrong with trying to teach your mandarin to eat frozen, there is a good chance over time he will learn to love frozen cyclops. That shouldn't be your first approach however. Have a tank stocked to the brim with pods and a plan to continually add them/keep your population as high as possible and let the mandarin learn to eat frozen over time.

 

[Big G]

Excellent post. Only thing missing is a pic of the little guy going to town on those pods!

 

[SCK1027]

Thanks for the info. I was about to to buy a madarin for my tank this week, but after seeing this post, it put into perspective how much they need pods and I'm not prepared for that... My tank would only last couple of days haha

 

[Katrina71]

Great post.

 

[living_tribunal]

Excellent post. Only thing missing is a pic of the little guy going to town on those pods!

I don’t know why I can never get the quality of YouTube videos to come out correctly. Here he is consuming 5 pods in 20 seconds, merely 30 minutes after being added.

(I know I have cyano lol)


He’s so bloody cute and active. They kind of have small guy confidence like a tailspot.

 

[TriggerFinger]

Love the tiny mandarin!! Thank you for the post, it does create a clear picture on what is required for these fish. And hopefully this saves some from dying of starvation in new tanks. How do you know how many pods you collect from your cultures? I’ve always been curious about this, a lot of companies state “1,000 pods per bottle” and such.

 

[living_tribunal]

Love the tiny mandarin!! Thank you for the post, it does create a clear picture on what is required for these fish. And hopefully this saves some from dying of starvation in new tanks. How do you know how many pods you collect from your cultures? I’ve always been curious about this, a lot of companies state “1,000 pods per bottle” and such.

That’s a good question and to be honest, I don’t have a good answer. It’s more or less an eyeball thing.

I gauge it by the amounts I’ve seen in bottles compared to what my culture looks like.

So for example, the first day after I harvest and set up the culture, it will look like this, maybe 1000 pods max:

After 3-4 days, my culture will look like this and will double again within the next 3 days.

After a week, there are so many pods you can’t see inside the culture and must harvest or risk having the culture starve out.

 

[Oz_Puffy]

I would love to see more of your culture setup and hear about how you run it. Mandarins are very high on my list to get one day when I can get my pod population established. I was trying to establish it within the tank using the extensive rock work and sand bed and the sump, but they haven’t taken off like I’d hoped. A dedicated additional refugium is now on the cards, but by the sounds of it not even that would support an adult pair unless they would take frozen or pellets as well.

 

[living_tribunal]

I would love to see more of your culture setup and hear about how you run it. Mandarins are very high on my list to get one day when I can get my pod population established. I was trying to establish it within the tank using the extensive rock work and sand bed and the sump, but they haven’t taken off like I’d hoped. A dedicated additional refugium is now on the cards, but by the sounds of it not even that would support an adult pair unless they would take frozen or pellets as well.

Someone asked me to do a quick little write-up on my cultures.

I'm by no means an expert on culturing pods but have been doing it for a while now. I think there are a couple hacks I could break down. I'll type some notes later tomorrow.

One thing that I think confuses people is that culturing pods is surprisingly easy. It's far easier to run external 2 gallon pod cultures in your cupboard than a separate fuge or system. You get about $50 of pods per 2 gallon culture every week.

All it takes is about $20 of equipment total and maybe 30 minutes of maintenance a week to run.

Culturing phyto is definitely more difficult however. Your setup has to be constantly sterilized as they are very susceptible and sensitive to bacteria.

I got rid of my phyto culture for a 3rd pod culture.

 

[131696]

Get the fish to eat other food while it’s eating good,put other food out on rocks see if it goes for it .it how I got away from pods and feed them small pellets And mysis shrimp. They eat lots of pods a day you can’t keep up unless you got some coming everyday.that fish costs lots to have.get 1 that’s bred In captivity and eats everything next time alot cheaper to go that way

 

[living_tribunal]

Get the fish to eat other food while it’s eating good,put other food out on rocks see if it goes for it .it how I got away from pods and feed them small pellets And mysis shrimp. They eat lots of pods a day you can’t keep up unless you got some coming everyday.that fish costs lots to have.get 1 that’s bred In captivity and eats everything next time alot cheaper to go that way

Making 20,000 pods or so a week is pretty cheap $. Costs me maybe less than $1 a week.

 

[tehmadreefer]

I’ve found feeding my tank provides plenty of pods for all my pod eaters, including the mandarin. Saves me money on having to never once buying pods too!

 

[DSEKULA]

Hiya!!
I have had many dragonet family fish train to pods. I have a 150 sump where I train them for friends even. My method is to selcon train them. Here's what I've found and what I do.

I started with fat pod eating fish and start adding a few drops of selcon to live new hatched brine bc I've heard it's good to help fatten them up and adds some nutrition. I'd then start adding frozen or liquid to the live brine. After a few weeks mine have all eaten almost anything I add selcon to with the exception of pellets... Pellets are tough but I did have one scooter take to the pe hatchling pellets. Now I use selcon as a stimlus before feeding. I add one drop right before food hits the water and all the fish including my current bulls eye green Mandarin come up ready to eat then I feed. I've seen the Mandarin rip frenzy away from the clown fish and tear it to Mandy size pieces.
Idk if this will help at all but I've trained about 10 fish this way without issues.

 

[living_tribunal]

Hiya!!
I have had many dragonet family fish train to pods. I have a 150 sump where I train them for friends even. My method is to selcon train them. Here's what I've found and what I do.

I started with fat pod eating fish and start adding a few drops of selcon to live new hatched brine bc I've heard it's good to help fatten them up and adds some nutrition. I'd then start adding frozen or liquid to the live brine. After a few weeks mine have all eaten almost anything I add selcon to with the exception of pellets... Pellets are tough but I did have one scooter take to the pe hatchling pellets. Now I use selcon as a stimlus before feeding. I add one drop right before food hits the water and all the fish including my current bulls eye green Mandarin come up ready to eat then I feed. I've seen the Mandarin rip frenzy away from the clown fish and tear it to Mandy size pieces.
Idk if this will help at all but I've trained about 10 fish this way without issues.

That's interesting for sure!

I do think I'm just going to stick to dumping in 20,000 or so pods a week for him as it's just a sure bet to keeping him alive and healthy. If things do take a turn I'll have to give this a shot!

That's a really creative hack, well done.

 

[xxkenny90xx]

Good info, thanks. Im tagging along to hear more about your pod culture set up

 

[DSEKULA]

I've found that you really need to train them b4 food gets scarce it's much harder when their stressed and starving. Ive always needed to fatten up the fish first before it even tried eating anything not alive. If you want it to accept frozen I'd try defrosting a bit of whatever you want it to try and mixing a small bit of the defrosted frozen food into the pod culture right before feeding them he will be likely to grab some frozen while the pods are on it tricking him to try it.

 

[living_tribunal]

I've found that you really need to train them b4 food gets scarce it's much harder when their stressed and starving. Ive always needed to fatten up the fish first before it even tried eating anything not alive. If you want it to accept frozen I'd try defrosting a bit of whatever you want it to try and mixing a small bit of the defrosted frozen food into the pod culture right before feeding them he will be likely to grab some frozen while the pods are on it tricking him to try it.

For sure. If my weekly pod harvests turn out to not be enough then I'll probably just add a fourth culture but I think that should be more than sufficient. I really want to just stick with pods instead of frozen, it's what they eat naturally and the safest way to keep them alive.

I've seen him eat a little frozen already though. I turned off my pumps after adding a cube of cyclops (my banded pipefish goes nuts for cyclops) and let the cyclops fall to the rocks. The little guy seemed to enjoy it.

 

[DSEKULA]

For sure. If my weekly pod harvests turn out to not be enough then I'll probably just add a fourth culture but I think that should be more than sufficient. I really want to just stick with pods instead of frozen, it's what they eat naturally and the safest way to keep them alive.

I've seen him eat a little frozen already though. I turned off my pumps after adding a cube of cyclops (my banded pipefish goes nuts for cyclops) and let the cyclops fall to the rocks. The little guy seemed to enjoy it.

They do enjoy it, I have a feeling some Mandarins do scavenge in the wild a little bit (just from watching them) it's just not as normal or their first preference for eating but they all seem to go nuts for prepared food once you get them to realize it's food. They will also come to recognize you as the feeder. Mine comes right to the feeding spot (feeder) and dances for food similar to a mateing dance flairing and diving up and down.

 

[living_tribunal]

They do enjoy it, I have a feeling some Mandarins do scavenge in the wild a little bit (just from watching them) it's just not as normal or their first preference for eating but they all seem to go nuts for prepared food once you get them to realize it's food. They will also come to recognize you as the feeder. Mine comes right to the feeding spot (feeder) and dances for food similar to a mateing dance flairing and diving up and down.

That's epic!

 

[itgoeson]

Great post! I’m also trying to culture phyto and pods for a future mandarin. My phyto crashes all the time and I’m considering doing two pod cultures instead of one pod and one phyto. If you’re not culturing phyto, what do you feed the pod cultures?