Is my tank capable of growing copepods?

[Cayreefer]

Good day all! Been reading forums and had just bought a ruby dragonet. He was eating frozen at the store but seems to not eat frozen in my tank. My current tank is 90 gallon aqueon reef ready(the one with the overflow) with plenty of live rock. Sump is a 40 gallon modified aquarium which uses about 30 gallons. I have a single filter sock, Bio balls(the plastic ones), 4 large bags of seachem matrix, a reactor with denitrate, and at end the water runs through a UV light before returning to the display tank. The tank has been running for 6 months but i used live rock from my previous tank which was running for 1 year and i also reused 50% of the water. I noticed the dragonet will not eat the frozen but picks off the ground. Im unsure if hes eating detritus or copepods. I just doubt theres copepods due to my UV light or at least if there is any that its just a few of em and he will eat them out. Does anyone think its possible for them to reproduce in my aquarium? I dont want the ruby dragonet to die. I live in the cayman islands( small island in the caribbean) so i get about 40 gallons from the ocean. I mix it with enough RODI untill its 1.025 and put it in my filter sock in the sump. Any parasites and diseases should die before going into the main display. Any advice?

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

If there is saltwater, the pods will live and reproduce. They mainly live in the live rocks and sand. if you want them to reproduce in high numbers, then feed phytoplankton to the tank. Keep on eye on the mandarin, if it stops swimming around and stops pecking at the rocks, thats a red flag.

 

[Jay'sReefBugs]

UV light has no effect on copepod population. More then likely you have some sort of copepod in your tank how many is the question.... easy and cost effect way to boost the population is feed a phyto based product

 

[Cayreefer]

Is seachem reef phytoplankton good enough? Its red and not green like the ones i see. I also took some mangrove water and put some copepods in a clear jar with an airpump in hopes of creating a small colony to boost the population. I feed them phytoplankton. I managed to get about 20-30 big copepods that are barely able to be seen

 

[Cayreefer]

And thank you for the replies!

 

[Jay'sReefBugs]

Is seachem reef phytoplankton good enough? Its red and not green like the ones i see. I also took some mangrove water and put some copepods in a clear jar with an airpump in hopes of creating a small colony to boost the population. I feed them phytoplankton. I managed to get about 20-30 big copepods that are barely able to be seen

Not sure about that product as I've never used it or looked into it I'm assuming it's preserved phytoplankton. You can also use phyto powders and coral powder food in a pinch to help feed them .

 

[cwerner]

The Seachem stuff is good. Honestly it's so cheap to culture your own that a lot of reefers opt to do that instead, but the store-bought stuff is fine. You could introduce some as well. There's several vendors that sell them, but I'd make sure first that your tank doesn't already have a population since they're a bit expensive.