Post Weather Disaster Recovery - Open To Feedback

[SpazNPedro]

Hello all-

My boyfriend and I were into the salt hobby only 8 months when a disastrous ice storm struck the area and left us without power for almost a full week. Four days into the power loss, our power generator couldn't even heat our house enough to keep us warm, let alone allow us to keep aeration and heat in the tank adequate for keeping our stock healthy. At this point, we had to abandon ship and move the fish. Luckily, I work at the local fish store and there was room for our livestock. They've been there about a month now.

When we finally got power back, we added more live sand (I had wanted a deeper sand bed anyway) and refilled the tank so that we could restart right away. So far things have been going well with our restart. After a couple of weeks, we brought home our yellow tang and two purple firefish. I've got a green spot mandarinfish, chalk basslet, flame angel, cleaner and peppermint shrimps, sand sifting star, a turbo snail, christmas tree rock, galaxea coral, various zoos and feather duster worms that are still waiting to come home.

The thing that really concerns me at this point is how I can boost the copepod population for my green spot mandarin. She'll occasionally eat small bits of frozen mysid shrimp, but has certainly preferred the copepods that have hitched in on my live rock. I can introduce copepods from our refugium at the store, but I don't want to wipe out the population for the tanks that are plumbed into it and rely on those food sources as well.

I'm also concerned about my pink finger leather. It went pretty limp at the store and has somewhat perked up since I brought it back a couple of hours ago. What can I do to help it along?

I'm on a bit of a short time frame. My boss @ the fish store will soon need the tank space back for stock he can sell. Does anyone have additional suggestions or feedback?

Thanks!

[Zooid]

Is there a local reef club in your area? If there is, try asking if someone cultures pods. Ask them for a starter culture and culture some for yourself.
Otherwise, try Reed Mariculture or Oceanpods. They sell Tiggerpods that you can put in your tank or refugium to try and repopulate.
If it were me, I'd get a few bottles because the Mandarin could be a little piggie hehe.

[SpazNPedro]

There is no local reef club that I'm aware of and my culture source moved out of state just after the storm. The outage was pretty widespread and I'm probably among a lucky few who didn't lose their tank, so finding another source will be a bit of a challenge. I'll give the 'pod products a shot and hope for good results!

[CarmieJo]

Hi SpazNPedro and to TR.

Ocean Pods and AlgaGen are TR sponsors and both have copepods.

[lReef lKeeper]

there are a few clubs up there ...

reef clubs in kansas-General Reef Topics-3reef Forums

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those are just from a quick google search. there are a lot more of us reefers than you might think !! lol

[SpazNPedro]

I found someone with a refugium, teeming (sp?) with 'pod "ravages" chaetomorpha. My little mandarin loves the pods, and my yellow tang is digging the chaetomorpha. Everyone wins!

[CarmieJo]

Sounds like everybody wins.