Need Pods Pods Pods

[Travis]

Hi all,
Haven't made a post in a long time due to knee surgery but I need some help/suggestions...

I had been cruising the LFS for the last few weeks and I noticed a Mandarin that was in a FO tank...I had been keeping an eye on this fish as I know they are very specialized feeders and it was not getting the care it required...and it was beginning to show.
Long story short...after much debate I decided that it had a better chance in my 75gal tank with 85+ lbs of rock than it did in that bare bottom tank.
The little guy was starting to thin out when I got him, so I hope I am not working on a lost cause but I figure better to try than seal his doom by leaving him at the LFS...Lets face it they are a beautiful fish, but best left to old salt's...which I am not. Given I have learned a lot over the last year and a half with this tank.
Now I am pretty familiar with the fish and their relentless hunting for food, however, I am not keen on pods and the such.
I remember when I first started this tank, I used to see pods climbing all over everything day and night. I am sure there are still some in there but it just isn't like it used to be.
How can I kick it up a notch and get some pod production going in my tank?

Thanks for any help.

Live calupera is usually crawling in copepods. Other than that you may want to consider a fuge and grow calupera in there, which is where your pods will reproduce. Best of luck

[quarryshark]

Best of luck and kudos to you for taking this guy in and trying to help him.
Chances are you still have the pods if nothing you have in there is eating them.
To verify, wait until the tank's lights have been off for a few hours and take a look with a flashlight. I am amazed at the number of pods crawling around.

[Travis]

Yeah I will have to take a look tonight after lights out...boy I hope it is loaded up. I don't think I have much in the tank that eats pods as its main source of food so I'll keep my fingers crossed...I wonder if there is an aquaculture supplier that cultivates pods???

[Pyxis]

here ya go, if you want some pods in a hurry, you can always purchase some here:

Here's a source for copepods http://www.aquaculturestore.com/swinverts.html
Here's a source for amphipods
http://www.ipsf.com/#anchor45957

hope it helps

[Travis]

Cool...I'll have look....I may be over cautious, but you know how things are with your tank...once a problem starts it just snowballs.

[quarryshark]

Maybe you will get lucky and get him to eat frozen food. I have a scooter dragonette. I have gotten him to eat angelfood preparation and recently he is starting to eat flake.
I do need to target feed him though, he is a slow feeder and gets outcompeted by my other fish.

[Travis]

Okay...I went and bought some amphipods and copepods from the website above. A little pricey...16 bucks for 30 Amphipods and 14 bucks for unknown number of copepods, which I am sure this mandarin can eat in one sitting. Will update my post to let you all know how I make out with this vendor. He sounded like a nice guy when I phoned him.
I wonder if I wouldn't be better off spending the money on some good live sand...I am not that impressed with the sand at the LFS though...I think mine is probably better.

[SpeckledGrouper]

Floridapets.com has a portion (?) of pods for $ 7.95. I haven't ordered from them, does anyone have any experience?

[Atari]

Adding phyto once a week should help the pod population too.

[tacosalad]

If you can obtain a starter culture, you could try farming them as described at this website:

http://www.seahorse.org/library/articles/copepods.shtml

says it takes about six weeks, but it could be a good backup source for live foods. I think I'm going to give it a try

[lando]

What type of filtration do you have? I have a sump and every few days I pull out the filter pad above the trickle plate and it has several pods all over it. I just pick them up and drop them into the dislay tank. Check your filters, you may be surprised.

[Travis]

Great. Ill give that a shot as well.

[Travis]

I might be out of luck on that one...I do not use mechanical filtration. Just live rock, DSB, a remora pro and weekly water changes. I have had very good success with this method...especially after shelling out the money for an RO system.