How many PODS are too many?

[tapsmith]

Okay, so I have a FLURISHING pod population, my tank is doing WONDERFULLY. Everything is growing, reproducing and really taking off.. Including my pod population. I have NO FISH in my tank. Just 1 peppermint shrimp, 1 sexy shrimp, 1 emerald crab, 1 red/orange crab, some snails and hermits. So how do I know when I have too many pods?? If I take a flashlight to a hole or two, then I can see them scattering all over the place.

So if it comes down to needing to get a fish in my tank, whats a good one to have. One that wont pick on any of my corals/shroom/zoo's. I have a 15 gallon with alot of water flow.

Thanks everyone for your help.

P.S. My LFS was saying that a fairy wrasse would be good, and that he was getting a real beauty in on Friday, just wondering if I should take him up on this offer.

[jesspaul]

My ClownFish and Green Chromis' love the pods. Its fun to watch them hunt. Some times a crab stirs them up and they snatch them. Even better one of the fish will flick its tail at the bottom and get the pods up into the water while the rest wait downstream and snatch the pods.

[ckreef]

IMHO there is no such thing as too many pods.

In my Minibow I have no shrimp/fish/crabs --- only corals and pods. AT times I can easily have a few hundred on the front glass and thats not counting the other panes of glass, the sand, the LR ect.....

All those different sized pods are food for some of the corals.

[Awestralian]

I wish i had that many pods.
Get a mandarin goby...

Thats all they live on...

[jesspaul]

How much will a mandarin goby eat? They are great looking fishes.

[tapsmith]

I agree that they are great looking, and I do love to watch them. They also get quite large. And in my little tank I would feel as though Im forcing the poor thing to be stuck in this little tank.
I think I'm going to stick with CKREEF's suggestion and just leave well enough alone. I honestly don't want to have to put any fish in here and start having to feed it once it runs out of pods.

I had at one time a yellow goby, but it disappeared. I also had a Blue Tang, but I'm guessing it died to, because I never found it. I have something in my tank that ate them both up with no questions asked.

[ckreef]

Yea a Mandarin Goby would make quick work out of a Nano Pod population and then you would need to get it to eat or it would starve.

I definatly like not having any fish. The tank stays much cleaner and I don't have any real algae problems to contend with. And the corals seem to love all the pods. I have some big ones and some really small, almost microscopic pods --- of course that means I probably also have some microscopic bugs crwling around --- just the way I like it.

Also every couple of months I give the tank a really good cleaning which clears out at least 50% of the pod population and I sort of have to start over watching them multiply as the4 the weeks go on.

[tapsmith]

Can you tell me about that "really good cleaning", what it entails?
I have some iddy bitty ones and then some quite large ones. I really for the most part don't have any problems with the tank besides alittle hair algae on a few rocks here and there. Today I decided to cheat and put one of the rocks that we majorly covered in hair algae in my husbands tank, he has a fox faced rabbit fish that makes a quick meal out of most hair algae.

And I agree with you, I do like not having any fish in the tank. I'm sorry my two inhabitants died, but I like it this way so much better. I do know I have a small 1/2 inch bristle worm that started to come out of a rock and when I picked the rock up to tweeze him out, he sucked himself back into the hole.

[ckreef]

I basically have one large piece of LR that makes up 90% of the reef. All my corals have been mounted directly to that piece of LR.

Approx every 2 months I remove that LR (w/ corals attached) from the tank. I give it a good scrub down w/ a tooth brush and some tweezers. This keeps it looking sparkly clean. I then clean all the glass really good and give the tank a 20-30 percent water change and then put everything back.

Basically everything including the LR gets a really good scrub down cleaning.

[imsuzibo71]

ok this might sound ignorant but what is a pod? lol

[jesspaul]

pods are the tiny shrimp-like (or roach-like if you ask my wife) animals that live in a marine tank. Most fish eat them, yellow polyps eat them, they eat leftover fishfood and some algae, they are actually fun to watch. My mandrian dragonnet loves them and in a 90 gal with ~200 pounds of rock he has yet to make much of a dent in their numbers.

[Shack]

If you only have a 15 gal. check out a Court Jester Goby aka Rainford. They are small and love to munch pods. I like their design too! Purple/grey with orange horizontal stripes.

[hankstanks]

PLEASE DONT PUT A MANDRIN IN A 15Gl Tank. It will surely perish and too many do so already.