Mandarin advice... Anyone successfully keep one for an extended period of time?

[mixtimp]

Part of the reason I decided to go with a reef tank is because I really wanted a beautiful mandarin goby as part of my tank. I have a 75 gallon, w/ approximately 80lbs of live rock. The tank has been set up for about 5 months with 80lbs of live sand, and the live rock was added about a month ago. I'm not sure how to tell if I have a good stock of copeods in my tank.
Should I purchase some from the LFS and dump them into my tank? Anyone with any advice, i would greatly appreciate it. Thanks

 

[puffer32]

Buy some chaeto and put it in your fuge, the pods will be in it as well as your LR, (I would add more LR also) and start to multiply. A 75 gal is not very big, you might have trouble keeping the pod population up, but you can keep adding pods periodically to keep population up. My LFS sold me a bag of chaeto, I asked for a hunk with lots of pods, and he gave me a ton of egg bearing pods mixed in the chaeto to jump start my fuge, and now i am over run with pods.

 

[natureboy]

some mandarins will eat mysis shrimp or brine shrimp. When you pick one out at the lfs ask them if it eats shrimp. If they say yes, ask them to feed him. I haven't been very successful with mine eating shrimp, but i got him when my tank was about seven months old and he's been around for about six months now. The guys at the LFS said you need to wait a year to get a good pod population. I dont see the huge number of copepods that used to crawl over the rocks, but he seems to be healthy. I have no refugium and about 75 lbs of live rock in a 75 gallon tank. If you can see copepods on your rocks frequntly, odds are you have a big enough population to support a mandarin.