how many pods should I order?

Looking to seed my tank with pods for a mandarin. I have a 240 DT with a sump. How many pods should I order to seed my tank for him? looking at reefs2go.com who has 1000+ pods and get 1000+ pods free for $33.99 I am thinking of ordering 3 of these, is this too much or to little?

 

I've heard that the pods you find for sale, aren't always the pods that are normally in your tank. IMO i would wait till you see the pods without adding any so that way you know when your tank is ready. You could add all you want but a mandarin would mmow through those pods in a week or so.

JM2C

 

Mandarins are constant pod grazers so I dont think you can just seed the pods once then be done with it. They will eat what is there so you would potentially have to add those once a week to keep the madarin happy. IMO you should wait for your tank to have the pods then set up an area were your pods can be safe and reproduce (where your mandarin cannot get to them). This spot could possibly be some rubble rock in netting....? I was going to get a mandarin, but I decided against it because of some advice I got from 3reefers. But, people do keep these fish healthy in big tanks. How big is your tank?

 

240 gallons

 

Oh....well in that case you will probably be able to successfully keep a mandarin if you do it right. How old is your tank?

 

been up for about a year and a half, maybe 2 years? Don't really remember lol

 

IMHO you should be ok.
240 gallons is a lot of water and I would call a 2 year old tank 'mature'.
If you want to be safe you could seed the tank with some pods, but I think you should be just fine. If you see your pod population go down then simply add more pods, but with a tank of that size I do not think you should see a pod population drop too many times. Maybe I am wrong but this is just MO. Maybe someone with more experiance with mandarins will chime in.

 

I had a mandarin for about three months, died of ICH but I loved the little guy. My tank was only six months old but he was still nice n plump when he went. I got him to eat blood worms though. Had to soak it on garlic but when the little bugger got a hold of it he ate. I'll prolly get another one, fun little guys to watch...

75 Gal. 90+ lbs. LR. Rebuilding beings in July after devastating ICH outbreak...

Sent from my Tundabolt using Tapatalk

 

agreed with JJL, just seed it like you wanted to do and you'll be fine just give it some time for the population to start reproducing, maby 2 months.

 

Anyone know of a better deal on them somewhere else?