Where to buy live copepods in Canada ??

[abcha0s]

Originally Posted by shingo43

has anyone tried this? Will it be ok for my mandarin?
http://www.jlaquatics.com/phpstore/s...ct_ID=rm-tp006

This thread is old, but I will offer my opinion anyways. Tigger-Pods are not a suitable food source for mandarins. Your Mandarin may eat them (if he can catch them), but in most cases this is not a sustainable solution. You will spend a lot of money replenishing your stock.

Mandarins like to pick off the rocks, while Tigger-Pods are largely free swimming. The real problem with Tigger-Pods is that they get blown around by the flow in our tanks and very quickly end up in the skimmer or dead by way of powerhead/return pump.

My suggestion - buy a bottle and dump it in your sump. Check hourly and watch as the population drops. By the next day they will be hard to spot. Within a couple of days, they will be gone.

There are exceptions. If your display tank is very low flow (ie. seahorses) it might work. Although it's still not an ideal food source for Mandarins.

Read this thread - http://www.canreef.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=60578

- Brad

[Reef-Geek]

Originally Posted by abcha0s

This thread is old, but I will offer my opinion anyways. Tigger-Pods are not a suitable food source for mandarins. Your Mandarin may eat them (if he can catch them), but in most cases this is not a sustainable solution. You will spend a lot of money replenishing your stock.

Mandarins like to pick off the rocks, while Tigger-Pods are largely free swimming. The real problem with Tigger-Pods is that they get blown around by the flow in our tanks and very quickly end up in the skimmer or dead by way of powerhead/return pump.

My suggestion - buy a bottle and dump it in your sump. Check hourly and watch as the population drops. By the next day they will be hard to spot. Within a couple of days, they will be gone.

There are exceptions. If your display tank is very low flow (ie. seahorses) it might work. Although it's still not an ideal food source for Mandarins.

Read this thread - http://www.canreef.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=60578

- Brad

Unfortunately I don't have a sump, and I just got a green mandarin. In this case which live pod food should I buy then?
I have a red sea max 34g and about 40lbs of rock, how long can the mandarin survive before I found new food?

[daniella3d]

Don,t bother with tiger pod as they are always free swimming and get grabbed by powerhead, skimmer and coral if you have coral that eat plankton.

For your mandarin, get some masago. Those are the little orange eggs that you can find on sushi. They are caplan eggs. You can buy a little quantity from a sushi restaurant to test it. Both my mandarin love these eggs and Hikari frozen bloodworms.

Mandarin eat fish eggs in the wild so their chance of picking at the fish roe (masago) is very very good.

I have trained 2 mandarins easily that way. Another thing that my mandarins love is live white worms. They are easy to culture. They are rich though, so only 2 times per week NO MORE.

The regular copepods is what you want to see a refugium but if you have a sterile low nutriment aquarium you will lack in copepods in no time. Pods need phytoplankton to survive and a safe place to reproduce. It is best that you train your mandarin to eat frozen. Start with the fish roe, easy enough. Mandarin eat the little copepods but their favorite are the isopods. Those are not available for sale that I know of. Copepods are tiny and you will have to buy tons of them if you are not prepair to train your fish.

I kept my mandarin alive and fat for 6 months in a 21 gallons before I moved him and his little girlfriend into my 75 gallons. So with good food he can live in there for a long time no problem, but don't rely on pods only, this is a sure way to fail.

Originally Posted by shingo43

Unfortunately I don't have a sump, and I just got a green mandarin. In this case which live pod food should I buy then?
I have a red sea max 34g and about 40lbs of rock, how long can the mandarin survive before I found new food?