Mandarins

[Solarflare8806]

hello I have a question about mandarins. I know that they eat pods, but will they eat Brine Shrimp too?

[tim_coville_]

Very rare they eat any frozen foods. I know bigfoot has one that eats frozen foods, but its really rare.

I know if you have around 70-80lbs of liverock, you should be fine. You just need to let the copod population grow a little bit...

I know you have a huge 220 gallon tank, I would assume your doing liverock so you should have PLENTY of room/foodsource for mandarin...

[Doctor_Reef]

Ditto's with tim...but I would wait for about 10-12 months so your pods have a chance to get a real foot hold before I would introduce any mandarin....:)

[gman0526]

A good way to boost pod population is by feeding phytoplankton to your tank, the little critters love it. and defineteley follow Ron's and Tim's advice give your tank time to mature, you'll be more successful with your mandarins.

[Doctor_Reef]

Gman have you ever used the frozen cyclopeez???sp

[gman0526]

I do as a matter of fact every other day. I feed it 15 mins b4 lights out and my corals and fish love it. I have seen some people feed cyclopeeze to their mandarins too with success but i beleive they rather hunt. But cyclopeeeze is a very high fat food very nutritious.

[Doctor_Reef]

That is what I have found also...I have heard that the pods will pic on what ever is left over and that will help grow them also....???

[Sugar Magnolia]

The mandarin that I had, and ultimitely returned to the store wouldn't take any prepared foods, including cyclop-eeze. It did accept live brine though, but I wasn't hatching brine, only buying fresh which got to be rather tedious and smelly. (ew brine shrimp stink)

Don't take the chance, let your tank mature for 8-12 months before trying one.

[Solarflare8806]

thanks for the fast replies yall. First yes I'm doing live rock in my tank and I have 300lbs of it. not only that I have a large aquafuge refugium on the back of my tank and then two thirty gallon refugiums that go direstly to the aquarium. All of the refugiums have live rock in them as well. I have had this set up for about four months now well actually three and a half (since may31 my b-day :) ). I do plan to wait awhile for my fish to be placed into my tank. I want to put in all my corals and inverts before my fish go in. so it should be awhile. I was just wondering this because I have a brine shrimp hatchery connected to my tank, giving it a constan supply of live brine shrimp.

[tim_coville_]

I am not positive it would be good to add all your corals and inverts before fish.

Fish produce ammonia to grow and feed bacteria to handle large bioloads.

Let's say you put a fish in, and he is under ALL your coral and liverock, and he dies.

you have a ammonia spike killing all your corals and basically killing your system.

I think you should incorporate adding fish/inverts/corals all in over a slow and easy period of time. Build up....

[Solarflare8806]

Yes you are absolutley right, there would be a huge ammonia spike by doing this. the fish that would go into my tank, into my main would not and are not the first fish to go into my system. If you have read some of my other topics they will tell you that my system includes;

Aqua Clear Pro 300 w/protein Skimmer

Aqua fuge refugium Large

1 40 gallon sump with live rock and crushed coral under my tank

6 30 gallon sumps-2refugiums, 1 full of bio balls, 2live rock bio mud and ccrushed coral combinations and the last one is a tank full of domino damsels (10)

5000 shorty protein skimmer

300lbs of live rock.

but your right after awhile your bacteria in your tank get used to what your tank is and a sudden increasse inthe load would cause a spike. that is one of the reasons why I have a tank with damsels in it to keep a supply of amonia to the bacteria. And another thing is that my system has over 500 gallons of water in the tanks, and filters and lines. so with this massive amount of water I think that the system should be ok. I really don't remember why I said I wanted to have it this way (invert/coral then fish) but I think that I will try it. I plan to add more sumps to the system because of the amount of fish I want to put in there over time. I plan to have more than quadruple the amount of water in my system( over 1000 gallons if possible)

[bigfoot]

taaaaaaaaaa daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa bigfoot makes an apperance my boss has a 60 g fuge with cheato taking up 100% of it he was going to supply pods for my mandarin as you see 1000's in his cheato but the spotted mandarin that i bought is tank raised he ate all the bugs attacking my yellow polyps but they all died any way the frags i got from sugar in the trade are doing awsome those shrooms are about 3 inches across now the blue zoos are spreading and the orange/green from her avatar are spreading like wild fire up a rock but enough about wandering from topic i put in frozen hakari mysis shrimp turn off all pumps and let it settle on a rock and he picks em off one at a time hes nice and fat doing awsome here with the frozen mysis shrimp give it a shot it works good and my other fish swarm it so i put in 2 cubes a day so he gets enough to eat