Cycling/copepods/confusion

[daniella3d]

A mandarin will eat all of your pods in a day or 2 and starve to death. YOU need at least 70 lbs of liverock and a very well established tank, minimum of 6 months, unless the mandarin is accepting frozen food.

Any trace of ammonia is a no go for any fish. Even 0.5 will kill a fish in few hours to a day. At high PH any trace of ammonia is extremely toxic.

Also to have a thriving mandarin, you must not have other fish in the aquarium that compete with it for pods. Anything that eats pods will make your mandarin starve.

Originally Posted by FaRico

Ok so I'm in the process of cycling my tank, it's been 3.5 weeks since it got set up. My levels are doing good, ammonia has spiked and has leveled off to 0-0.5 my nitrate is at 5 ppm. Lately I've noticed that the amount of copepods is increasing, they're everywhere. When is it too early to add something to gobble these guys up? I'd love a mandarin, but I think it might be to soon. Thoughts?