Mandarins, Copepods & ATS

[johnarky]

My question is about the pod population that an ATS supports. I recently acquired a leopard wrasse and 2 mandarins (psychedelics, a red one and a green one). The wrasse and the mandarins pick at the rocks and appear to be regularly eating things that I can't see (pods?). My worry is that they will deplete the tank of the pod population and then starve. The wrasse eats frozen as well but the mandarins only eat from the rocks and sand bed. The tank has thousands of "little white specs" floating around all the time. Are these pods? It's definitely not sand or bubbles or anything like that.
It's a 90 gal tank with about 150lbs of LR the rest of the livestock is: Sailfin Tang, Blue Hippo Tang, 2 False Perc Clowns, Sleeper Banded Goby, Foxface Rabbit, Coral beauty, snails & crabs.
I've been running my scrubber for 4 months now. I still have the skimmer in the sump but I'm not using it, it just sits in the water. I guess I just feel "safer" having it there if something happens, hahaha. I know, it doesn't make much sense. Anyway, I'm not using a filter sock either, the ATS is the only form of filtration.
So I guess my questions are...
The mandarins and wrasse are doing fine now, but will they continue to do so or will they soon start to starve?
Are those thousands of small white specs pods or something else?
Should I be adding live pods/critters on a regular basis?

Sorry for the long winded questions... Thanks!

[SantaMonica]

Yes the specs are pods. Two medium mandarins should be fine in a 90 w/scrubber. Just depends on how fat you want them to get. As long as they find a pod every 10 seconds or so, they are getting enough. If your nutrients are fine, and want the mandarins to have more food (or have more/bigger mandarins or scooters), you can let the scrubber go longer before cleaning. The pods will increase in the extra growth, and the filtering will decrease due to shading, and you can decide when it's gone far enough.

[johnarky]

Good news, thanks SM. They seem to find pods every 5 seconds or so. I'll just keep an eye on them as things progress.
Does it do any good to "shake" the screen off in the tank before cleaning it each week? I feel like theres a lot of pods in there and maybe I can "shake them out" of the screen before cleaning?

[SantaMonica]

Some people do it, but I've never tried it.