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Lets Talk About Pod Eating Fish


paul b

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Lets talk about Pod eaters. We aquarists call anything small a Pod, but a Pod or copepod is a real animal unlike Pee Wee Herman or Weiner who are other things, but not pods. We also have amphipods which are much larger. If our tanks are healthy and the paired fish are spawning, like they should be, there will be tiny fish fry all over the place also. For this discussion, we can also call them pods because fish will eat them. (although they are not really pods)

 

Again, if your tank is healthy and has some age to it, it will be loaded with "pods" or pod like animals and this is a good sign as they are the beginning of the food chain. If you keep moray eels, triggerfish, groupers, lionfish, whale sharks, manta rays or elephant seals pods are not that important.

 

I personally like to keep smaller fish such as mandarins, pipefish, shrimpfish, ruby red dragonettes and an assortment of smaller cardinals and bleenies. All those types of fish really need something like a pod. Not an I Pod.

 

Living pods are much better than make believe pods like frozen foods due to the fact that they reproduce on their own and are available for most of the day unless they are on a coffee break.

 

Those types of fish need to eat all day and if you have no pods but you try to feed them a few times a day using frozen foods, those fish will slowly starve and more importantly, they will hate you.

 

If you feed those fish I mentioned correctly, and they are paired, they will start to spawn in a couple of weeks.

 

A fish such as a mandarin should live at least ten years and it will if it is fed correctly.

 

 

 

 

If those fish are not spawning, you don't have enough "wild" pods in your tank and you should supplement them. I have plenty of wild pods but because I have about a dozen pod eaters so I supplement them every day using new born brine shrimp which I add to a feeder.

 

New Born brine shrimp can just be added to a tank but the shrimp have a bad habit of being attracted to light so they will immediately head to the surface where they will get a nice tan, but at the same time, be hiding from the pod eaters which for the most part hunt at the bottom where real pods live.

 

The feeder will keep the shrimp at the bottom where the fish can easily get to them.

 

The thing is simple to build and it is almost self explanatory.

 

It's basically a flat container with a nylon stocking on top. I found that inside a used RO cartridge there is a plastic mesh that works better as the sea urchins don't chew it up. A tube, no larger than 3/8" goes to a funnel on the surface. Shrimp are added with a small bit of water than washed down with another tablespoon of water. The shrimp stay in the container and try to get through the mesh where the fish pull them through and eat them, then they smile. The fish, not the shrimp which I would imagine are not smiling and probably have some sort of grimace on their face, but I try not to look at them too closely.

 

 

 

 

Eating from the feeder

 

[MEDIA media=youtube]wisMeEfLTzI

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here they are eating New Born Shrimp just "squirted" in the water.

 

[MEDIA media=youtube]rchIXRIDE2A

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Those mandarins are nice. Unless trained to eat frozen they tend to only eat things that move. I've seen them eat bristleworms. Also, blood-worms when I make them jiggle with a baster. I also had success getting the eat orange and red sushi roe. My MD died from ich which is unusual but it does happen.

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Wow! First time I'm hearing about mandarin getting ich.

I tried my wits out trying to see if my mandarin would eat anything except pods. Tried live bloodworms, sushi roe, had bristleworms in my tank it never touched.

 

Except pods, live brine shrimp it didn't care about anything else.

 

How big was your mandarin which ate bristleworms and bloodworms?

Mine was about inch long female.

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Paul b! I wish I saw your feeder before. I lost my 2 purple queen anthias just because they don't want to eat anything except live food.

Moreover they are not that good of a pod hunters either. Only live brine shrimp is what I saw them actively hunting at in my tank.

I had my tank/refugium full of cope/amphipods but they could get enough.

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They start out earing only live shrimp, but then will eat frozen.  But they are still a pain to feed because you really need to feed them 3,4 or 5 times a day and I have a life even though they don't  :cool: 

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