My trick has always been to make a rubble pile somewhere in my tank where detritus naturally builds up and where my fish can't get at my pods. My rubble pile is actually underneath all of my rock in the very back of the tank where it is almost impossible to see. I seeded the tank with some pod-heavy rocks and fed some food to the rubble pile for the first couple of weeks but now just let the detritus do the work for me. It is a POD FACTORY. My mandarin has learned to hang out at the pile at certain times of the day when there is an apparent changing of the guards to to speak... it's like the pods work shifts. Weird.
I also use a CPR bakpak skimmer with the biobale removed. The skimmer acts both like a skimmer and a refugium there is always a ton of pods running around inside of there.
When hanging out with the head of research at the Vancouver Aquarium a couple months ago I brought up the discussion of pods. He said that most pods that you buy won't actually form breeding populations as they eventually just die. Surprisingly a number of the pod species sold in stores aren't native to tropical saltwater conditions are are not raised in those conditions and so die fairly quick in our tanks. Not all, but most. His opinion also was that trigger pods are the devil as they are a predatory pod that can take down other smaller pods and fauna and even kill and eat fish fry (if you ever try to breed fish that is).
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