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reef chili and copepods (1 Viewer)

so a bit of an update. Even though I was dosing a ton of pods each week, I first lost my red scooter a month ago, and today found my mandarin. Both ended up starving. I won't be doing any more mandarins until my 180 is setup.
 
Sorry to hear about the lost fish, it is never any fun. Out of curiosity (I'm a data collector, ignore my screen name) did you try to target feed anything besides the pods? Any kind of mandarin diner setup?
 
data_loss said:
Sorry to hear about the lost fish, it is never any fun. Out of curiosity (I'm a data collector, ignore my screen name) did you try to target feed anything besides the pods? Any kind of mandarin diner setup?
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I'm curious about the same thing. Also, how many times were you "dosing" pods to the tank for the mandarins? I've been reading about them and have come to find that each one will eat about 2000 pods a day...
 
It was heavily stocked to begin with. You could see pods all over glass, rocks, etc. I was dosing 4000 twice a week. Roughly half a 2 liter.

I tried getting him to eat the nutramar. Bought he would simply just spit it out. My red scooter loved it. I lost him after he just stopped eating. Not sure why he went from actively eating frozen plus pods to nothing at all.

I'm thinking the mandarin and scooter were out competing each other for pods. Which is too bad. I was working really hard dosing as much as I can. Because I can't do a fuge, I want to hold off adding one to my 180. I will be keeping my pod culture going for members as well dosing the future fuge on my 180.

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This makes me just believe even more what Matt Pedersen wrote in his "Rethinking Mandarins" Coral Magazine article:

I cannot tell you how many purportedly healthy (read: starving) dragonets I have seen in 100- to 200-gallon reef tanks. I believe it is fundamentally wrong to take this hands-off, “good luck little fishy” approach to fish care. In fact, I can’t think of any other fish that we keep where we just throw them in the tank, don’t even bother to try to feed them, and hope for the best. I’ll take all the heat for calling this method irresponsible and perhaps even unethical. I am not saying it cannot work—it can, but I do know it often doesn’t. More importantly, there is now a better way, and because there is a proven proactive and direct manner in which to keep dragonets in the best condition, I can never condone going back to the way things used to be.
There is an upside—with modern techniques, dragonets do not require large tanks. I personally would have no issues with the well-planned addition of a single dragonet to a smaller cube tank. I am aware of at least one person who had a spawning dragonet pair in a standard 10-gallon aquarium.
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I'm not saying you personally took a hands off approach, in fact quite the opposite with the pod culture. I'm saying it seems to me it is important to really try to get them trained to eat prepared foods. With mandarin diners and training to get them to frozen and pellets all four of my mandarins have stayed nice and fat. Even when I don't feed as often as I should.

Here is hoping the next one goes better for you Mike :beerchug:
 
Yeah believe me I tried every other day with nutramar mixed with pods in a turkey baster. The mandarin just would not take to it. I would have done a diner but all my fish could fit in it so I felt it would be useless because my clown, gramma, and chromis could all easily get in one.

I think personally next time I try, I think using a breeders net may be better.
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