5 months old

[steveo32]

Heres your p[ics

 

[cybermeez]

bored and waiting for sopranos, some fish pics.
and a questions. i want to get a manderin eventually. i see a couple pods in the fuge when i turn on the light but i dont think im ready yet. i have a sponge in the baffle after the fuge and before the return, i clean it every other day, will this prevent the pods from making their way into the main tank so the mandarin could eat?

Yeah, the sponge can keep some of the critters from getting through. If it were me I'd wait a while on the Mandarin. You should be seeing lots of tiny copepods on the glass of the main tank and also actually swimming around in the refugium in swarms before I'd even try adding a Mandarin. I'd also add a sand bed to the refugium. That helps the tiny pods that Mandarins survive on grow and repoduce better. Feeding them phytoplankton also helps boost the population.

Most Mandarins in the LFS haven't eaten for weeks. The longer they are there the worse it gets and they can be so far gone that they won't even try to eat once you put them in your tank, even if it has a good pod population. So, absolute ideal conditions are best if the Mandarin is to stand a chance of surviving.

My Mandarin

 

[o0jmadr0x0o]

Traded the maroon for a pair of percs today

also changed up the way i have my fuge set up...now a small power head pumps water from what used to be the fuge into a small 5L container. the reason for doing this is allot of people telling me the flow through my fuge was to much and the macro algae would not thrive...i have also started supplementing with DT's phytoplankton and i have noticed a large jump in pods, but only in my macro algae container, in the large sump area below that now only has live rock i don't see any, not even when i turn on the lights

also built a canopy that cost me about 15$

full tank