Building up your copepod numbers

Hey guys, when I first set up my 20 gallon nano, I had very little copepods, now I would eventually love to keep a mandarin of some type, so obviously with no copepods this is unrealistic, so I threw on a prefilter on my inlet, and waited, 2 weeks later they are every where! just a tip that worked for me

 

What is a prefilter?

 

its just a piece of foam placed over you inlet to prevent the from getting sucked up, it gets cleaned often but I dont mind cause it helps keep my pod count high

 

Interesting. Pics?

 

sure hold on I'll see if my camera can pick them up ;D

 

so this is within about 3-4 days of installing a "prefilter" or foam on the inlet just fyi before I did this I never saw any copepods, yesterday there were half as many so the numbers are growing quickly. p.s. sorry they arent perfect but copepods are so tiny!!

 

and thats just the glass haha I can only imagine whats in the sand and lr

 

I mean a pic of where you put the foam lol..on the overflow?

 

LOL sorry hold on

 

I'm a little skeptical here. I just don't see how adding a piece of filter floss increases your pod population in just 3-4 days. I'm thinking you already had a pod population on the rise and it was just coincidence that you saw the outbreak after you added the floss. On another note, unless you have an alternate way of adding pods to your tank, a mandarin will quickly decimate any population you have in that small of a tank.