Tank seeding???

[cajunturtle]

I saw for the first time a Mandarin Dragonet in the LFS today. It was simply amazing.

I must have this fish.

Can anyone either point me in the correct place, or tell me how to provide the proper amount of food for the Dragonet.

I would love to have a pair for my tank.

I currently have ..
one maroon clown fish
two pajama cardinals
one purple striped dottyback
a few snails, and hermits
one diamond goby
a mushroom and a green star polyp

If I need to purchase the copapods to "seed" the tank I will do it.

My tank is 55 gallons, has about 3 or 4" of live sand, with about 70 lbs of live rock..

[gmate]

Dragonettes eat amphipods and copepods in your tank. These are tiny little 'sea bugs' that can have huge populations in mature tanks (1yr+ old) but poor populations in anything younger. If you are lucky, you can purchase a fish from the LFS that has already been weaned onto frozen mysis, but I wouldn't recommend trying to do so yourself.

Also for general information, try the Reef Discussion or New To The Hobby forums. Those boards are more frequented and you'll get the answers to basic questions like this quicker. Best of luck and welcome to reef central :D

[cajunturtle]

If I get one that is eating the frozen foods... would mandarin need to be fed multiple times a day? If so .. how do I keep my other fish from eating along with it?

I saw that my lfs had a bottle of the copepods. Is that enough to feed one, or is it enough to put into my tank now so that in the future I can be certain of the correct population.

Thanks for the help

[GTR]

Was the bottled stuff live? The other problem with the Mandarin is they don't compete well for food when there are more aggressive feeders in the same tank. With a natural population of live food they are better at hunting them down than most mid-level swimmers.

[cajunturtle]

I purchased the copapods today that you can put into the tank.... all my fish had a field day eating them... not sure if any made it.. I am gonna have to do the refugium thing i think. The bottle was live copepods.

[GTR]

I think adding them when the lights are out is best.

[Jeremy Blaze]

Inland Aquatics sells kits with pods, and such.

[cajunturtle]

Inland Aquatics sells kits with pods, and such.

What is the name for a kit like this?

[Jeremy Blaze]

Those bottled pods are tempter species and won't live long in our tanks anyway.

As for inland, look at their detritavore kits.

[cajunturtle]

Those bottled pods are tempter species and won't live long in our tanks anyway.

As for inland, look at their detritavore kits.

Thank you very much

[Jeremy Blaze]

Those bottled pods are tempter species and won't live long in our tanks anyway.

As for inland, look at their detritavore kits.

[cajunturtle]

I went out yesterday and purchased more live rock for my aquarium. I have about 100 lbs of rock in the tank. I hope this will help me prepare for the dragonet. I want two red ones. Plus my tank now looks just wonderful with all the rock..

[TimeConsumer]

If you bought your rock live (not dry) you won't have to seed your tank. It'll have pods on it already. 100lbs of rock is good, that will support a large population. How old is your tank?

[philosophile]

You need to get a healthy population of tsibe copepods... Reefpods have bottles you can buy of them. They are virtually invisible.

Mandarins are like hummingbirds, they are constantly eating, with fast metabolisms. You can't feed them just once or even twice a day and expect them to thrive. You need a self replenishing population of pods. Thats where the refugium comes into play. Without a refugium, don't even consider keeping a mandarin... Unless maybe your tank was huge, but a 55g tank won't cut it probably.

There are plenty of threads on RC that talk about keeping these fish, please do your research before you buy one... After all of my research, I upgraded from a 30g to a 90g last month, and am very patiently waiting for my tank to mature well enough for me to keep a mandarin.

[philosophile]

You have 100lbs of rock in you 55g tank? Will you even have room for fish?

If you want two, you really need to consider a bigger tank.

[cajunturtle]

176714

[cajunturtle]

If you bought your rock live (not dry) you won't have to seed your tank. It'll have pods on it already. 100lbs of rock is good, that will support a large population. How old is your tank?

My tank is close to 3 months old.

[TimeConsumer]

My tank is close to 3 months old.

I wouldn't introduce a dragonet until the tank is a minimum of 6 months old, a year would be even better. Looking at your rock, if that weighs 100lbs, it must be very dense. If I didn't know any better I would have thought it had only 60 pounds. That may not be enough to support a mandarin, you might want to consider adding a refugium.

[el aguila]

The post about needing Tisbe copepods is correct. They are better than Tigger or tigriporous pods. A refugium is a great move.

You can purchase mysis and/or ampiphods from Inland Aquatics in IN or Sachs aquaculture in FL for starters of these.

It is also not difficult to culture tisbe pods. If you can find some Reed's Phtofeast for food (I use the dead rather than live). Then put them in a tupperware or plastic flat container 9 x 14 with a minimum 4" depth. I do small water changes in my tank weekly and just use some of this water when starting or changing water. I know that some people use 5 Gallon buckets; I seemed to have problems overfeeding and the cultures crashing in a bucket.

1. Fill your container up to 2" deep with fresh sea water. Set the culture in an out of the way place where it won't get bumped or dirt in it (not under an air vent).

2. Put a mark on the edge with a sharpie to mark the depth. You will need to manually add RO water to top off to the mark 2 to 3 times per week.

3. Add some Tisbes.

4. Next add a few drops of Phyto. The trick is to keep the water lightly tinted green/brown. If you over feed, the cultures can crash.

5. At the end of two weeks you should be ready to harvest. Get you about some 1/2" plastic tubing siphon all the gunk off the bottom until you have half of the water depth remaining - running it through a filter around 100 to 150 microns (get them off E-Bay or Amazon) to strain the copepods out. Refill with fresh seawater to your 2" mark. Add your harvest at lights out with pumps off for a few minutes. From then on harvest weekly.

6. Get an extra culture vessel. Then once every two to three months strain the whole culture emptying all water and start a new culture in your extra vessel. I have went 6-7 months before cultures started crashing.

If you get two cultures going you can harvest one on Wednesday and the other on the weekend. This keeps fresh new copepods in your tank and gives you a cushion if a culture crashes.

Also I do not use air stones. with the flat culture vessels there is enough air exchange even when the culture develops a film. I assume that the culture may stay a little more healthy with air, but it works without it.

If you get cultures going for about 3 months, by the time you add a mandarian the tank should be self-sustaining and your weekly harvest will keep your fishes fat and happy.

[philosophile]

Live rock needs to be really porous. If its dense, then the tiny holes where copepods can hide from the dragonets, won't be there or won't be enough, and the mandarins will just wipe out your population of pods in a hurry.

[cajunturtle]

The post about needing Tisbe copepods is correct. They are better than Tigger or tigriporous pods. A refugium is a great move.

You can purchase mysis and/or ampiphods from Inland Aquatics in IN or Sachs aquaculture in FL for starters of these.

It is also not difficult to culture tisbe pods. If you can find some Reed's Phtofeast for food (I use the dead rather than live). Then put them in a tupperware or plastic flat container 9 x 14 with a minimum 4" depth. I do small water changes in my tank weekly and just use some of this water when starting or changing water. I know that some people use 5 Gallon buckets; I seemed to have problems overfeeding and the cultures crashing in a bucket.

1. Fill your container up to 2" deep with fresh sea water. Set the culture in an out of the way place where it won't get bumped or dirt in it (not under an air vent).

2. Put a mark on the edge with a sharpie to mark the depth. You will need to manually add RO water to top off to the mark 2 to 3 times per week.

3. Add some Tisbes.

4. Next add a few drops of Phyto. The trick is to keep the water lightly tinted green/brown. If you over feed, the cultures can crash.

5. At the end of two weeks you should be ready to harvest. Get you about some 1/2" plastic tubing siphon all the gunk off the bottom until you have half of the water depth remaining - running it through a filter around 100 to 150 microns (get them off E-Bay or Amazon) to strain the copepods out. Refill with fresh seawater to your 2" mark. Add your harvest at lights out with pumps off for a few minutes. From then on harvest weekly.

6. Get an extra culture vessel. Then once every two to three months strain the whole culture emptying all water and start a new culture in your extra vessel. I have went 6-7 months before cultures started crashing.

If you get two cultures going you can harvest one on Wednesday and the other on the weekend. This keeps fresh new copepods in your tank and gives you a cushion if a culture crashes.

Also I do not use air stones. with the flat culture vessels there is enough air exchange even when the culture develops a film. I assume that the culture may stay a little more healthy with air, but it works without it.

If you get cultures going for about 3 months, by the time you add a mandarian the tank should be self-sustaining and your weekly harvest will keep your fishes fat and happy.


Thank you for this. I am emailing my favorite fish store so they can get me some in stock. I am going to follow your advice. I looked at my receipts and it seams that I have 90lbs of live rock. About 20 lbs came solid white and was told it dried out before they got to the store. I bought them anyway since they had some amazing textures on them.