[9fishers]

I was reading on another thread about Manderines and their need for pods. I was wondering when you know you've got enough pods to sustain one? Ive got pods of all shapes and sizes scurrying around 100lbs.LR and 100lbs LS. However tank is only 3 months old. It would seem to me that at some point there will be a continuous, steady number of them. But how will you know?

 

[Ray1214]

I would wait until my tank was at least a year old. You can tell. There are tons, and within several months of adding my mandarin, it was decimated. I keep a refugium and I supplement his diet with zooplankton, rotifers, enriched brine shrimp, baby brine shrimp, mysis (both frozen and live).
I also put a small 5 gal tank together with calurpa when I discovered these shrimp (not scuds, ampods or copepods) making tons of babies in my HOT filter. (I keep it off unless I am due for a water polish). It turned out to be a colony of mysis, and these like lower light so I used an old 5 gal bow tank and halimedia, and calurpa clippings and every so often I drop in some phytoplankton. I just scoop out a bit and drop in for my seahorses and my mandarin.

Ray

 

[9fishers]

Thanks Ray

Yes, I will def wait. I had no plans on getting one anytime soon. But I did want to know. I have a 20g sump and a 10g refugium loaded with calaurpa. I also feed my tank with room temp(dead, I guess)phyto. as well as DT's Live phyto. I once saw a few mysis shrimp but I havent seen them lately. I keep pregnant peppermint shrimp so someone is always making baby shrimp. (Heres a point to ponder.....I caught 2 preg. peps and put them in the refugium. Both made babies so obviously both are female. Right? One gets preg. again so its female so the other one must have "changed" into a male. Right? Well, now its preg.,too! Very interesting...huh?). Anyways, I was wondering if there was a quotient or ratio....ie.: 1 sq." has a minimum of 5? 10?pods. Maybe a "rule of thumb" I missed somewhere? There just seems to be soooooo many, its hard to imagine any pod eater starving to death.

P.S. Cant wait to meet you tomorrow!!!!

 

[Guest]

how do you know when you have enough....imo you can never have enough

 

[Doug1]

Nichole, Peppermint shrimp are hermorphodites, they have the biological function of both male and female. 2 together will generally keep both prego as it were, but they can't fertilize themselves. The chances of any of the babies surviving to maturity are thin but they are a great source of zooplankton. Its all food on the reef