Just when I thought I was out...
... They pull me back in.
Gobies, that is.
A green mandarin goby. Actually, it's a dragonet, not a true "goby." Now, if you know anything about these guys, or you're a card-carrying member of the mandarin gestapo on fish forums, you're probably shaking your head or spitting fire right now. But you know what? My copepod culture arrives today. I have my pod cultivating farm on my windowsill right now, ready to host the progenitor 2000 pods which will feed the mandarin until I can wean him onto mysis and hopefully, formula 1.
Traditionally, mandarins are found in large systems with 75+ pounds of live rock. This is so the pod population will not be decimated and can reproduce enough to sustain the mandarin goby. However, if you can culture some 100 pods a day to feed the goby, then there is no reason this fish should not thrive in a nano tank.
Note the line you can see on his side. That means he's starved.
He was in the fish store's non-live rock tank for three weeks, eating nothing. Sad thing is you often see them in worse shape...
I had a fair pod population in my tank. I could see them on the glass, on the rock, on the sands, scurrying about like fleas. However, they've all been consumed. This is why under normal circumstances mandarin gobies cannot be kept in small tanks, even those with an ample fuge. They will wipe out an entire pod population in a matter of days.
I hope to break the stigma around these fish as well as piss in the eyes of all the nay-sayers... if all goes to plan, I will be not unlike Lando Calrissian blowing up the core of the second Death Star and delivering a crippling blow to the Galactic Empire... only the blow will come to the mandarin gestapo who attack and flame anyone who dares mention the unspeakable name of Mandarin Goby.
Stay tuned for a full feature, in-depth article outlining the researched and painstaking process I'm doing to make this work.
- J
P.S. I wrote this entry Friday, put it up for an hour, then got cold feet and dropped it. The mandarin gestapo are not to be trifled with... nor is any fish nazi, guru, or self-styled "expert" who thinks they got all the answers.
I started my first culture jar. 3/4s of a pod bottle went into the main tank, then the rest went into the quart jar. I added about a 1/4 of the second bottle, and the remaining pods are in their commercial bottle just in case this population doesn't take off.
The mandarin is showing signs of improvement. His abdomen is not so pinched, and he constantly grazes for pods on the rock and over the sand. He seems to nail one every 5-10 minutes. I can still see the amphipods scurrying about. I added a "pod pile" (a cluster of small live rock for pod reproduction so fish can't eat them all) as well as inserted a scrubber sponge in the filter box. Once I have my second and third jars up and running, I'll swap out this scrubber with one in the quart jars. This may harvest amphipods as well as copepods... so I'll have two jars of pure strain and 1 of mixed.
Gobies, that is.
A green mandarin goby. Actually, it's a dragonet, not a true "goby." Now, if you know anything about these guys, or you're a card-carrying member of the mandarin gestapo on fish forums, you're probably shaking your head or spitting fire right now. But you know what? My copepod culture arrives today. I have my pod cultivating farm on my windowsill right now, ready to host the progenitor 2000 pods which will feed the mandarin until I can wean him onto mysis and hopefully, formula 1.
Traditionally, mandarins are found in large systems with 75+ pounds of live rock. This is so the pod population will not be decimated and can reproduce enough to sustain the mandarin goby. However, if you can culture some 100 pods a day to feed the goby, then there is no reason this fish should not thrive in a nano tank.
Note the line you can see on his side. That means he's starved.
He was in the fish store's non-live rock tank for three weeks, eating nothing. Sad thing is you often see them in worse shape...
I had a fair pod population in my tank. I could see them on the glass, on the rock, on the sands, scurrying about like fleas. However, they've all been consumed. This is why under normal circumstances mandarin gobies cannot be kept in small tanks, even those with an ample fuge. They will wipe out an entire pod population in a matter of days.
I hope to break the stigma around these fish as well as piss in the eyes of all the nay-sayers... if all goes to plan, I will be not unlike Lando Calrissian blowing up the core of the second Death Star and delivering a crippling blow to the Galactic Empire... only the blow will come to the mandarin gestapo who attack and flame anyone who dares mention the unspeakable name of Mandarin Goby.
Stay tuned for a full feature, in-depth article outlining the researched and painstaking process I'm doing to make this work.
- J
P.S. I wrote this entry Friday, put it up for an hour, then got cold feet and dropped it. The mandarin gestapo are not to be trifled with... nor is any fish nazi, guru, or self-styled "expert" who thinks they got all the answers.
I started my first culture jar. 3/4s of a pod bottle went into the main tank, then the rest went into the quart jar. I added about a 1/4 of the second bottle, and the remaining pods are in their commercial bottle just in case this population doesn't take off.
The mandarin is showing signs of improvement. His abdomen is not so pinched, and he constantly grazes for pods on the rock and over the sand. He seems to nail one every 5-10 minutes. I can still see the amphipods scurrying about. I added a "pod pile" (a cluster of small live rock for pod reproduction so fish can't eat them all) as well as inserted a scrubber sponge in the filter box. Once I have my second and third jars up and running, I'll swap out this scrubber with one in the quart jars. This may harvest amphipods as well as copepods... so I'll have two jars of pure strain and 1 of mixed.
posted by Josh Day at 10:41 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home