Bugs

[0pius]

What is the most effective/efficient way of getting the bugs that live in sand out of the sand and into my tank. I would like them as a natural food source for my fish and also I am assuming that they have some benefits to being in the sand as opposed to sand itself.

Can this be done, should this be done?

[wasp]

Are they already in your tank Opius? If so just let them breed, the fish will pick at them when they see them.

[suphew]

If they aren't already in your tank siphon some sand from some one elses tank, you only need 1/2 a cup to get it started.

[0pius]

I have some in my tank, but have a sand filter fish phalaena goby and would like to have the sand full of food. What I want to get is the tank as nearly self sufficient except for my puffers, and would like to get the bugs that live in the beach/Ocean

[wasp]

Opius, unless you have a very large tank this fish will not sustain itself from bugs etc. in the tank alone. You will have to train it to eat food.

[0pius]

I already have it eating prepared food, and I am not expecting it to live on bugs alone, but it filters sand for a reason, and I want to try and provide a better environment for it almost exactly as it would have in the wild (with the obvious not needing to be stated).

I am not expecting the tank to go fully self sufficient but to have merely sufficiently enough of itself to aid the life of the fish.

[0pius]

How do people that have a mandarin fish provide the nutrients normally provided by the creatures it would have eaten in the wild that lived in the sand, or are they merely giving prepared foods.

[suphew]

Theres a rule of thumb to use, something like minimum 4 foot tank and 50Kg LR, this provides a big enough area for the pod population to maintain itself and provide food for 1 mandarin. Oh and the tank needs to be a certain age.

NB: dont used the above numbers I'm not sure they are right, but you get the idea.

[wasp]

People with manderins let them eat pods ( little white bugs that live in the tank ). Very few manderins ever learn to eat prepared food and for this reason some new reeferes loose manderins to starvation having bought them not realising their needs. But a few manderins learn to eat frozen food.

To have a manderin the tank needs to be of a size and nutrient level to support a big enough pod population to support the manderin.

With your Goby, it is unlikely your sandbed will ever supply a major part of it's diet, because the emphasis in a tank must be on keeping the sandbed and tank clean. You can only have a large population of critters in it, if there is a lot of organics in there for the critters to eat. But this is not such a good thing for the tank generally.

However, Pies is the man to talk to about this, he has a refugium that supplies a big part of his fishes diet, from critters that breed in it. If he is not reading this thread you could drop him a pm.

[Feelers]

I think from what I've read there is a minimum tank size (quite large) for a mandarin, so that the pod popluation is big enough to sustain their eating habits.

I think mandarins are really hard to get onto prepared foods maybe.

If your really keen you could have a specialised pod rearing tank above then main one that overflows into the display, someone else was talking about this on another thread.

As far as I know, lots of cracks and crevaces, and lots of food/waste help them reproduce, and possibly a dsb might help? Also I think they like rotting seaweed but unsure on that.

[0pius]

Thanks for that feelers.

[0pius]

Thanks also to wasp.

[Feelers]

I have seen some massive deep-sea isopods, 30cms long and probably 12 cms fat. They look real creepy. Heavy too, kinda like an armadillo.

Has anyone tried feeding slaters as a replacement? They are also isopods, but they presumably have a different nutritional makeup. Just a thought.

[wasp]

Let's know how it works out Opius

[0pius]

Will do, I think I will keep a log of my success and failures with this along side my log of success and failures for growing coralline algae. Finally got a patch growing about the size of a 50 cent.