I have yet to see the mandarin eat anything except pods. In the store he was taking frozen but my tank was so infested with pods I think he is spoiled now. To be honest it has really concerned me to the point of buying more pods. So far I have added pods twice. I dont know if I should let the pods run its course for a while and see what happens or if I should just keep adding some every month or so. When I got the new snails in if I spent 3 dollars more I could get a 5 dollar off coupon so I added pods to it. So they paid me 2 dollars to take some pods off there hands. To be honest it looked like a bag of water, when I have bought tiger pods you could see them. The DT I cant see hardly any anymore but the refugium has tons of them. I turn the chaeto when I get home from work in the morning and I can see hundreds go into the return pump section. Soooo I dunno...at this point I am just praying that it is going to be ok. I dont mind reseeding every month to keep the mandarin....just dont know if I should or not.