[ejwsr]

The math is pretty straight forward for population dynamics without predation. What you are seeing in the cycles are generational die outs of adults. The most important question is what species of 'pods are in your tank? From that data you can estimate when you will have a population that is large enough to be self sustaining under predation pressure.

As for how many pods are consumed? This is where I lobby for a paradigm shift in thinking about copepods. The simple analogy is how many french fries can you eat per day versus how many 1/4 lb cheeseburgers. The same idea can be transferred to 'pods. How many depends on the pods, their caloric value per pod and dietary requirement of the predator. If we would think in terms of biomass and grams per day consumed versus produced we would have a better quantitative figure of merit rather than other subjective measures.

Let's look at three of the 28000 pod species.
T. californicus (tigger pods) are a large, slow generating species. There generation cycle is 28 days with a life span of @90 days. During the last 60 days the females can produce 500 offspring. If 1 gram of biomass is equal to 500 adult pods and a mandarin eats 1 gram per day then it is rather intuitive that the population is not going to survive.

Other species are more prolific and have shorter generation times and therefore can establish a surviving population faster under predation pressure.

The other thing is not the total weight of live rock, but the surface area to volume ratio. The bugs need a spot to graze. The best analogy would be basketballs to marbles. Marbles have a higher surface area to volume ratio than basketballs.