What are pods? Or feeding a mandarin question
 

Newbie question...humour me.

I'm looking at getting a psychodelic mandarin and keep reading that they like pods. I'm not clear what pods are? My other fish, flame angel, and two clowns eat formula one and frozen brine shrimp.

stats - 50 gal tank, compac light 96, 85lbs live rock, mushrooms, frogspawn, button polyps, etc. and a clean up crew.

One other thing..what is the toadstool doing at night when it sends out a thing that looks like a spider web over to the live rock.

thanks for any info
Linda

Go over to Forum Tools on the far left of you screan and click on Search Do a search on pods there should be enough info there for you

Linda, pods are the little bugs that run around the rockwork, mostly visible at night. A mandarin requires a well established tank with lots of live rock. If your 50g is a year old or more, and has lots of rock, you may be OK. Check out this and other boards for "pod piles", which will explain how to create safe breeding areas within your tank to keep the population going. Mandarins can quickly clean out a tank and then starve to death. They seldom eat prepared foods.

You can buy pods commercially, saw some for sale. When i find the site i will re-post. Or search around yourself. When I decided I wanted a Mandarin Goby which eats only pods, I went and got some from a friend. We sucked em up with a turkey baster and i put half in my 'fuge and half into my tank ( at night and directly into sheltered piles of rock so they wouldn't be immediatly eaten). Now I have a mandarine in one tank and a spotted in another and they both are fat and happy. Pods breed like, well - pods (very quickly). They are quite comical to watch after dark darting about like drunken taxi drivers. haha

Thanks..using the search definitely helps. I didn't notice that before. Oh well I learned a lot reading through postings trying to find what I was looking for.

Now I can hardly wait until tonight to see if I have any pods running around at night. I'll also check into whether I can purchase some.
Linda

Reef Crew sells copepods but they look like they are sold out right now.

http://www.reefcrew.com/Assets/Html/...ls/Copepod.htm

It took me a while to notice there was a search too.

I have piles of pods if you want a scoop or two of my substrate full of pods drop me a line. :biggrin:

Thanks for the offer of the substrate. But, I'm thinking now that I should wait on getting my tank more stable before I add a mandarin. I really appreciate the offer. Linda

Linda, glad you decided to wait. When your tank is mature, they're a great fish. And they'll still be for sale when tht time comes. :smile: