copepods

[katwoman]

I have a mandarin fish who is slowly starving. He had been eating live brine shrimp, and frozen ones as well. Even though my tank is a relatively passive one, clownfish, sailfin tang, etc. He has been getting thinner and thinner. I talked to an owner of an aquarium store who has been selling me what he said was copepod eggs, and told me how to introduce them into my tank for the mandarin fish to feed on. Trouble is that I have as of yet to see anything grow from these eggs. I am wondering if it is possible to grow copepods from eggs, or to get them live?

Would like to try and save this little guy I have had him for over a year and he seems to be a fighter.

 

[liquid]

:welcome:

I'm going to move this to the General Discussion forum.

You might try searching the back issues of our online magazine Advanced Aquarist in the Breeders Column as there is information there on how to rear copepods: http://advancedaquarist.com/index

Shane

 

[Juck]

Mandarins don't usually take frozen foods so you're lucky in that respect at least, but he can not be sustained purely on frozen brine,, nutritionally, the stuff is next to useless. Try soaking the frozen brine in Selcon first ( most Aquarium Stores sell it),,, if you can get him to take this regularly then it might fatten him up.

Mandarins are very active fish and they need to eat constantly,, they can be difficult to keep unless there is enough Live Rock to maintain a viable population of copepods and Amphipods etc., their natural diet.

How big is your tank and how much LR is in there? Do you have a refugium? Don't think I've ever heard of copepod eggs sold retail like that,,,, maybe they're brine shrimp eggs? How are you hatching them?

 

[dcamp]

Check out www.seapods.com They sell live copepods. They could direct you to a dealer in your area or a online source.

 

[PRC]

You can try ordering the materials from Florida Aqua Farms to culture brine shrimp and rotifers. If you feed the brine shrimp when they still have yolk sack attached they are much more nutritious. You can also try Cyclopeeze and the smallest frozen Mysis you can find. In the long run you'll need to have a minimum of 75 lbs of LR in your tank and preferably an upstream refugium with at least 30 lbs of LR and some macro to foster pod production.
Some people have claimed to have success building small "pod piles" in there tanks. These are small piles of LR, which the fish cannot enter, that allow the pods to reproduce enough to maintain a steady population. Some people put small plastic cages over the piles, like the baskets strawberries come in.

 

[Sugar Magnolia]

looks like the online source that seapods has listed is out of stock. does anyone else know of another online retailer that sells this stuff?

www.ipsf.com sells amphipod breeding kits. Since my mandarin now refuses to eat anything BUT live brine which I feed selcon to, he's slowly getting thinner day by day as well. I have an empty 3 gallon eclipse tank sitting around collecting dust so I'm going to hit the reef store this week and pick up some LS and small chunks of LR and LR rubble and set that up as a pod breeding tank. I figured without any predation going on in that tank, I should be able to keep a decent pod population going so I can occasionally transfer some pods over to the main tank.

whaddya think? good idea or doomed for failure?

 

[Anonymous]

I'd keep looking for the culture kits and try and get him to switch over from the enriched BBS. Where are you located? Maybe there is a local reef club whose members have some you could start with?

Also you could try golden pearls:

http://www.brineshrimpdirect.com/golden-pearls.html

I haven't ordered from this source, but have seen others on a seahorse board that seem to be happy with the results:

http://www.lfscultures.com/kits.html


Good Luck!

 

[PRC]

Sugar Magnolia, 3G is pretty tiny, not sure how much good that will do. Why not just go to walmart and get a 15G rubbermaid plastic tub for $5?

 

[Sugar Magnolia]

hehe, because my husband would shoot me if I had another tub sitting around.

I'm just going to stick with the selcon fed brine for now and continue offering what the other fish eat and hope for the best.