Apocalypse Pod Breeding for Mandarin

[ToSurfOrNot]

I've heard way too many mixed stories here and I just need a general rule of thumb. I now have had 3 shop owners nearby, all very successful say go ahead and buy Apocalypse pods because they breed better from algae barn, throw them in your tank and let them be alone for a month. You can then add your mandarin to the 45G AIO and it should be a sufficient population that is too high for him/her to ever kill off.

Yet some people rant on here that you can never have a mandarin in a small tank without a big refugium. I am not interested in the eye sore. Does anyone really debate what these three separate shops are telling me as some of the largest retailers in all of California? Or am I safe to assume they are correct if I let them breed for a month first. I do already feed mysis and other frozen foods so it is possible they would get some of that as well.

 

[blaxsun]

The reason you need a big tank (80-gallons or more) is not due to the size of the fish - but the size of the copepod population. More rocks = more copepods. And Mandarins hunt nearly 24/7, so unless you're supplementing pods every few weeks or get them hooked on frozen - they're gonna finish off the pods in a 40-gallon tank and then starve.

 

[Johnnyrainbowreefer]

In a nano less the 50 gallons you will really never to be able to sustain a culpable pod population. So what I highly recommend doing is cultivating your own pods. It’s easy. Check out YouTube and study up. If I can do it anyone can do it lol.

 

[davidcalgary29]

You can also try to obtain a captive-bred speciment. I kept one in my 13.5g Evo for a year before it died in a bleach accident. It was quite content with mysis.