copepods

[logancorri]

will copepods be able to live in my DT? and reproduce as my dragonate eats them?

[ReachTheSky]

Yes, they will reproduce in the DT but dragonet's consume them at an alarming pace throughout the entire day. Unless you have a refugium where they can reproduce in peace or are adding pods yourself directly, they will be wiped out.

[organism]

In a 55 gallon they might have trouble keeping up with the mandarin eating them. What some people do is make little piles of rubble rock in the back corners or in the back of the tank so that they can breed without the fish getting to them.

[dkeller_nc]

If you already have the dragonet, you may want to consider immediately setting up a copepod culture outside of your tank. The amount of copepods you need to generate to keep a dragonet healthy is quite large, and is somewhat difficult to do even with a large tank (120 g or larger) and/or a large refugium of >20 gal.

But culturing copepods to a high density is pretty easy in a separate culture vessel. You need the following to culture them:

1) Culture vessel. I use some Lustar plastic 2.5 gallon tanks leftover from my killifish keeping days, but you can use virtually anything that has an open top, including a partially filled 5 gallon bucket.

2) Air pump. Any air pump will do, and you will also need a piece of stiff plastic tubing that you can weight down on one end by tying on a piece of rock with a plastic bread tie. While you can use a standard airstone, that's not preferred because it will quickly clog in the culture environment - a simple open-ended tube that emits large bubbles is what you want.

3) Food source. For most copepods commonly available, this is phytoplankton. You can culture phytoplankton yourself in a a separate culture vessel using nothing more than miracle grow plant food. Or you can buy concentrated phytoplankton from Reed Mariculture (Reef Nutrition's PhytoFeast is one of their concentrated phytoplankton products, but they have others). One simply puts a few drops of phytoplankton into the copepod water sufficient to make it slightly cloudy.

4) (Optional) Light source - copepods don't need light to grow and reproduce, but if you're using live phytoplankton like I am, having a light source over the copepod tank lets the phyto reproduce in the tank until it's eaten.

5) Filter for copepods. You will not want to put the copepod culture water directly in your tank. Instead, get a piece of Nitex cloth in the 35 um opening size. Nitex is sold by a number of sources in a large variety of opening sizes specifically for the purpose of filtering various sizes of plankton from seawater.

6) Copepod starter culture. You can get this a lot of places, but if you want pure single-species cultures, I'd suggest AlgaGen's copepods.

[Joe0813]

I might have to try this.... not jacking the thread but will a mandarin eat small flatworms too? They are a little bigger then copepods

[Ryand63]

do you all think in a 55 that just pod piles are enough without a fuge or anything to sustain one dragonet? I too have a 55 and have been wanting to get a dragonet but dont' have a refugium

[Joe0813]

no it will eat all the pods

[ReachTheSky]

This might not be pretty but you could create a sort of pod "cave" inside the DT with rubble rock. It's important for it to be small enough where the Dragonet can not reach inside. Once a week or so, put a small piece of shrimp in the cave so the pods have a food source and can reproduce safely in there without being eaten.

Still, this might not be enough. As stated, Dragonet's eat pods at an alarming rate. Culturing pods is a great way to go but you will at the very least need a refugium.

[trzabka]

i dont know if this is true. I got a mandirine goby, I do stock pods now but i didnt always do that. if you have enough live rock the pods should be able to hide, and reproduce safely.

[trzabka]

"""I might have to try this.... not jacking the thread but will a mandarin eat small flatworms too? They are a little bigger then copepods""".

Im not sure that they will ive read that the will but. I seen at the LFS that they tried to move them into a tank that was loaded with them no luck

[Dissy]

I have a LOT of larger pods the mandarin doesn't eat.. So I supplement with tigger pods every couple weeks to give the larger pods time to make more babies. She also eats a few other things in limited quantities, but if you don't keep a constant eye on your tank, and don't dose additional pods, you won't have any luck at all, IMO. They eat constantly. If they're not eating, they're sleeping.

[trzabka]

mine eats frozen food but i often see the little lady eating fresh pods off the glass. like i said i stock 250 live pods from reefs2go every couple months always have baby pods on the glass

[SpartaReef]

I bought 8k pods from reefs2go over the course of three months give or take... Also got pods off of liverock and frags from multiple sources. My mandarin hasn't depleted the population at all...

[SpartaReef]

Oh BTW I've had the mandarin for a couple months now... Three approx, and the pods were in the tank prior to adding the fish.

[trzabka]

8 k pods is alot i bet your tank looks like a circus after dark

[FsuNole]

I heard that if you get an ORA mandarin you could be able to feed them something besides just copepods. Don't remember what exactly they like though. I've been wanting one too but am worried about my copepod population when the time comes in my 58 gallon.

[FsuNole]

Here is the info directly from ORA (http://www.orafarm.com/products/fish/dragonets/blue-mandarin/)

[SpartaReef]

8 k pods is alot i bet your tank looks like a circus after dark

They're like roaches how they scatter when the lights come on.

[gcline87]

Check out the thread "copepod not manderin related." There is some good info on there. Wow 8K pods that's a lot!

[ahmed_iAM]

One other thing. The amount of phytoplankton and the type of pod also had an affect on ho fast they reproduce. I usually put a pinch into my 90 gallon weekly, though the corals would be the only natural predator, I have issues looking through the glass some days because there are so many. When I don't feed the glass will clear up in a couple of days. It probably wont work for your size tank though.