What eats amphipods but not copepods?

[pseudorand]

I'd like to get a mandarin, but I've read they eat copepods but not amphipods. I can see lots of amphipods, so it stands to reason that I may be a bit short on copepods, since amphipods eat copepods. I'd like to get a fish that keeps the amphipods population in check but leaves the copepods for a mandarin. Is there any such thing?

Also, how to you QT a mandarin? Must you set up a sump with copepods on your QT tank to keep it fed?

 

[PicassoClown04]

I'd like to get a mandarin, but I've read they eat copepods but not amphipods. I can see lots of amphipods, so it stands to reason that I may be a bit short on copepods, since amphipods eat copepods. I'd like to get a fish that keeps the amphipods population in check but leaves the copepods for a mandarin. Is there any such thing?

Also, how to you QT a mandarin? Must you set up a sump with copepods on your QT tank to keep it fed?

I believe mandarins eat anything the size of a copepod. @Paul B is kind of an expert on all things that eat copepods so I would ask him. He uses a baby brine shrimp feeder and all of his pod eaters are doing great.

As for QT’ing a mandarin, I really don’t recommend it. I hear they respond badly to medications. I would put it into observation with lots of live rock from your DT. Set up the tank several months prior to getting the mandarin and only use water from your water changes to fill it. I clip a felt filter sock to my bucket so my water gets filtered and it goes into the bucket clean. Then I dump that water into my newest tanks. It just has a little more nutrients and stuff in it than new water. A ball of cheato in a mesh bag for the pods to breed in will never hurt anything. Dose pods and phyto into the tank so the pod population stays high and be ready to feed the mandarin with baby brine shrimp, can o cyclops, etc because even with all of this prep there is no way the mandarin will have enough to eat. I cannot recommend Paul B’s mandarin feeder enough. I’d say watch it for 2 weeks, make sure it looks okay, is eating and swimming well, etc then pop him into your DT. If he looks like he is starving AT ALL I recommend putting him into your DT. Feeding him is gonna be your hardest challenge in QT.

 

[ichthyogeek]

Uhhh....mandarins do eat amphipods as well. And small worms. And small snails. And anything that fits in their mouths, including live mysis, brine shrimp (adult and baby), and isopods. Copepods are the most recommended because they breed the fastest, and that's what people can breed without it being a pain in the butt to do so.

Go buy PaulB's book. Set up the brine shrimp feeder as it's described, or if you're like me and have a hard time DIYing stuff like that, commission somebody to make it for you/3D print it for you. Hatch brine shrimp until the fish is fat in quarantine, and train it to eat all the frozen food and pellets. Then let it loose in a tank filled with live foods as well.

 

[vetteguy53081]

If it can fit in their mouths, it will be consumed

 

[FlexingFishSticks]

If it can fit in their mouths, it will be consumed

Sounds like me

 

[xxkenny90xx]

If it can fit in their mouths, it will be consumed

Agreed! But their mouths are tiny....

 

[tnw50cal]

There is a video on youtube of a guy who buys a bag of amphipods and feed them to his mandarin.

 

[PicassoClown04]

You will be fine with just the amphipods

 

[mort]

Agreed! But their mouths are tiny....

Their mouths are tiny but like seahorses and pipefish they can take surprisingly large food (my mandarins loved krill, pe mysis etc). These little fish open their mouths, create a kind of vacuum, and suck the food down so quickly that it is squashed small enough to consume. If you watch closely enough you can see them expell the unwanted parts of the shell, which looks like a little puff of smoke.

 

[JohnFrsux]

The underwater world is heavier than the land world. It's hard for me to remember which fish eats whom.

 

[Clownfish_Boy]

I concurr with the others, get a large enough Mandarin, he'll eat anything he can get into his mouth.

 

[LRT]

Recently added a red corris wrasse to help maintain and balance a huge amphipod explosion i let happen over the past year. Its absolutely glorious watching it catch and savagely beat the adult pods against the rocks before he devours them.
Take a real close look at what kind of pods you have. Some are carnivorous especially the hunchback pods and will eat zoas, rfa and bubbletips and most likely any coral thats tasty if food is not available to scavenge.

 

[LRT]

I concurr with the others, get a large enough Mandarin, he'll eat anything he can get into his mouth.

There's only one problem with this. My adult pods get almost as big as medium size mysis shrimp.
My mandarin doesn't touch them but it does eat babies.

 

[Whisperer]

Adult amphipods may be too big to fit even in a big mandarin but their spawn start really tiny and they move slow enough to be eaten. I have a good population of amphipods and hardly see copepods even at night and my mandarins (pair) are healthy.