Mandrin Dragonetts

[JustDavidP]

If you have a mandarin that eats frozen foods, and that is the bulk of their diet (like mine), you will want to ensure that they are kept with "like" fish. What I mean by that is that they hunt and consume food in a very slow, deliberate, manner (much like a seahorse).

If you kept them with more agressive eaters, like damsels, cardinals etc., they may not get their share of foods before the mysid etc. is stripped from the water column.

Dave

[Geoff]

Question- why would the pods want to leave the refugium?

i have asked many people to put nets on their refugium outputs to see how many pods it would catch in 24 hours. so far. no one has caught one. this is a big myth. there is nothing that would make a pod want to leave the comfy confines of the refugium.

now, if you are going into the refugium on a daily basis and harvesting the pods to put in the display than that is a different story.

it is better to just setup a couple of 10g pod breeders and feed that way.

G~

[JustDavidP]

There is no reason for WANTING to leave... but they do. I've used filter socks and collected TONS. Otherwise, when needed for my seahorses, I transfer them by way of moving their "Condo" from one tank to the other. I use different "media" for different "pods".

Gammarus Amphipods

tend to gather in these rubble filled tupperware containers:



The smaller, Munnid Isopods


They like to be tucked away in LR or in these pad/media condo's.



I simply remove them from my cultures or refugium, and place them in my tank as needed. In some cases, a little encouragement is needed (shake the bejeeezus out of them) otherwise, for the seahorses, they like to hitch to the condos and snipe the bugs as they make themselves available.

Also, keep in mind, you really don't WANT the larger bugs to get into the display. If your display is fed by pump, the larger ones (statistically) stand a greater chance of getting snuffed by impellor sheer. Plus, you want them to stay behind as "breeding stock". It is the smaller, larval buggies that you want to make their way through, to help colonize your display.

Dave

[ChilisREasy]

i have alot of those Gammarus Amphipods pretty good size too

[JustDavidP]

That's actually a picture of a "molt" from one... but yeah...some of em can get big. I keep them far away from my fish fry tanks.. some of them could take down a newborn seahorse !

D

[ChilisREasy]

what eats them ? do hawks ?

[JustDavidP]

Anything that can get them into their mouths They are probably one of the best foods in your system. To boot, they are "recycling detrivores. They will eat all the detritus they can get, to include their own waste *blech* They are very beneficial micro crustaceans for your system.

D

[JustDavidP]

I guess I should have said "Anything that can get them into their mouths...minus true herbivores.

D

[kyrie_eleison]

It's taken some time, but my copepod population is starting to make a come back. I did notice one thing that was very cool: I saw one of the copepods snag and eat something that resembled what I believe to be a "flatworm".

Pods are not only great but almost a necessity! Not even cleaner shrimps can match their usefulness. Well, that's not entirely true either but they are important even if you don't have a mandarin.