Thank you oh so much kind sir
Exactly the info I needed, oh & I spent a few minutes today studying this Mandarin and I can confirm that he's a male (pointy and long first dorsal spine) he appears to be young because he's quite small at <2" and he does not look thin, I looked where you told me to and there are no indentations, he's plump & round all the way through.
Rest assured I'll be back at the LFS like a crack head at his dealer's place if needed to make sure he stays well fed, hopefully I'll get enough pods in the tank/fuge to keep him happy until my larger fuge is ready and/or I get some cultures going.
How much volume in pod cultures would you say I should start with? I was thinking a couple of 1 gal jugs or 2 liter bottles! probably not enough still but I'd like to cover all basis as to maximize my supply of pods for the little guy. Space is no issue, my tank has slowly began to take over my whole garage
No other fish in my tank except for the flameback angel nip at rocks which is still quite rare, they pretty much are spoiled & wait for feeding time, so through simple observation it appears that he's the only one capitalizing on the pods already in my tank.
Furthermore I'd like to eventually feed less frozen/dry foods and increase live food population because I tend to be heavy on feeding and algae is a touch & go kind of thing in my tank likely because of my habits, but I love these fish so I'd rather deal and fight with unpleasant algae than to underfeed. Parameters are solid though, no high nitrates or phosphates, in fact I'm starting to believe I've stripped the tank of all nitrates but that's whole other thread