- Joined
- Oct 28, 2018
- Messages
- 81
- Reaction score
- 215
Hey all,
I've been thinking about a Mandarin for a long time but always steered clear of them due to them being rather specialist.
About a year ago I started two outdoor 30 gallon pod cultures knowing I wanted a Mandarin. I upgraded my tank from a nano to a 50 gallon display in May.
Since then I've been dumping copepods into this tank every week which got it's first fish (4 Anthias) a few weeks back. From May until now it's stayed mostly fishless, I did add two clowns which had Brook so I ended up going fallow and I cycled it for 8 weeks before that... I also put Anthias through QT for a month which has left my pods with no predators since the tank was set up really.
As you can imagine, their populations are booming. They are everywhere on the glass, sand, rock. They are in my sump, there's a lot of them and I still have 60 gallons of pod cultures in my back yard which are doing well.
To me I "think" I'm ready for a Mandarin, but I guess I'm hoping for a second opinion first. I have two clowns and a wrasse in QT now so I'm at least a month away from buying a Mandarin and it will go through QT itself but is there a surefire way to know when a tank has enough pods to support these fish?
Thanks
I've been thinking about a Mandarin for a long time but always steered clear of them due to them being rather specialist.
About a year ago I started two outdoor 30 gallon pod cultures knowing I wanted a Mandarin. I upgraded my tank from a nano to a 50 gallon display in May.
Since then I've been dumping copepods into this tank every week which got it's first fish (4 Anthias) a few weeks back. From May until now it's stayed mostly fishless, I did add two clowns which had Brook so I ended up going fallow and I cycled it for 8 weeks before that... I also put Anthias through QT for a month which has left my pods with no predators since the tank was set up really.
As you can imagine, their populations are booming. They are everywhere on the glass, sand, rock. They are in my sump, there's a lot of them and I still have 60 gallons of pod cultures in my back yard which are doing well.
To me I "think" I'm ready for a Mandarin, but I guess I'm hoping for a second opinion first. I have two clowns and a wrasse in QT now so I'm at least a month away from buying a Mandarin and it will go through QT itself but is there a surefire way to know when a tank has enough pods to support these fish?
Thanks