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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.
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.