Feeding my mandarin

[rrasor]

More lessons learned...don't buy a mandarin unless you have the life to support it. Unfortunately, the wife bought livestock before I found this site and realized that we probably couldn't support a mandarin right now.

So, here is my delimma. While I figure out how to get a refugium setup, I need some food for my mandarin NOW. I live in the central brevard, FL area and need to get some type of temporary food source. I have seen people talking about buying 'pods' at the LFS. Is this all I need to do? Do I just call the LFS around here and ask them if they sell 'pods'? Are there multiple types? Do I just buy them and put them in the tank and let the mandarin and other fish find them?

I am very confused and the mandarin doesn't look very healthy right now since he has pretty much cleaned any life that was in the rocks out.

My mandarin and I thank you:D

[luceneck]

For a quick fix you could try and find someone who is willing to let you borrow some of their live rock. If you are able to take established rocks from someone else's tank it should be full of pods. Put that in your tank and the mandarin will eat off that rock. In the mean time setup your refuge and have a put some of your rock along with the another piece of borrowed rock in there. The other rocks will help seed your rock, but I haven't seen a LFS sell pods. You could try some baby brine shrimp or some other type of small Live foods.

[Entropy]

Try brine shrimp to buy you some time. Most mandrin will eat brine and if you soak it in Selcon it should be enough to keep them alive until you can get your refuge going.

[dsalillas]

My LFS let me have a few of their sponge filters on their cleaning day to help boost my pod and shrimp population.

You could also order from here (http://www.aquaculturestore.com/swinverts.html) the price includes shipping.

[hatchetwoond]

You said you were in Brevard right? www.floridapets.com They specialize in inverts and plants and will sell you a bag of 100+ pods for $5 and some change. They are located in Cocoa. I believe they do this out of their house but I've called them before and said it was alright if I stopped by if I was in the area. Otherwise it was like $5 to ship to Orlando. They can also hook you up with some macro for your long overdue refugium. Also, when you do set up your fuge, you might want to consider if you are feeding a mandarin with pods from your fuge, you want the pods to be alive when they get to the tank. So you might wanna go with a hang-on type fuge with a siphon typr outflow rather than something with a pump driven outflow. This way the pods don't get chopped up by the pump impellar. I have a CPR that works for me but they are a bit expensive. They are people on this site that can make the same type for you for less money.

[rrasor]

Thank you for all the information. I have been looking into refugiums and I have heard good and bad things about them. I have heard that they can crash a tank, especially if the macro algae goes crazy. Also, due to my current configuration, the only option I have is an 'in-tank' refugium since I don't have alot of room behind my tank.

All of this is very confusing and I have had other issues with my tank. Unfortunately, we leaped before we looked and now we are scrambling to catch up, not a very wise thing to do in this hobby!

I have e-mailed floridapets since they seem to actually be on my way home from work and asked them about the pods.

Thanks again.

[i8chicken]

rrasor,
Hello, I just sent you an e-mail with the local phone # for FloridaPets, and some other info.
Do you guys have a refugium on your tank? If you do and it has return pump, you could keep a few chunks of live rock in the refugium for the pods, and then alternate placing the pod infested rocks in your tank for the mandarin. That way you wont have to worry about them all being sucked up and pulverized by the pump.
Hope this helps you out a little.
Jennifer

[i8chicken]

Sorry, just saw that you don't have a fuge.

Maybe you could take some live rock rubble, make a pile of it in the back corner of your tank, squirt the pods down into the pile and stick a strawberry basket over the pile so the other fish won't get all the pods before they have a chance to breed. Wow that was a run on sentence!

Just an idea I've heard of people doing before.

[DStroman]

I have recently started to hatch out brine shrimp. I purchased a 400ml hatchery and 3oz of cysts from www.florida-aqua-farms.com That along with a cheap $4 air pump from petsmart and salt water is all you need.

I hatch out about a 1/4 teaspoon of cysts every other day to feed to my tank. From what I have read, their egg sack makes them a good food source for up to 30 hours after they hatch. You can enrich them by feeding selcon or phyto but should wait until about 8 hours after hatch to allow their mouths to fully develope.

My mandarin won't accept prepared food but loves the live baby brine. Look in the fish breeding forum, at the top of the page is a link to quite a few good food culturing articles.

David