mandarin (ideas?)

[Big_Pun]

i would like to setup a nice habitat for a mandarin, i know they eat only live food, i have a 20L a 29g (is that big enough) also what do i need to establish before i get one, what other fish do good with, how many gobys can i have together. i work for a school so summer is coming up and have alot of free time coming up. thanks

[Kristy]

They mainly eat pods, but it is rare but sometimes you can get them to learn to eat frozen also. They do best in established tanks (6-9 months) with lots of live rock. Your tanks are pretty small, but it is not impossible. You can help your pod population along by buying bottles of them and you can set up safe havens, small live rock rubble piles in the rear corners for the pods to populate also. We have a small target mandarin in our 20g hex, so it is possible, but we bought him from another MAASTard and he does eat frozen. We would not have put one in that small of a tank unless he was also eating frozen. I would suggest waiting till the tank is well seasoned and buying one after confirming he eats. I would also suggest being careful of having other fish that eat your pods also (some wrasses, scooters blenny (actually a dragonet like the mandarins) or others will deplete your pod populations also.

Most gobies are pretty sociable, we have a Randall's goby with the target in the 20g.
HTH - Mike

[barderer]

Mandarins are dragonets which have slightly different needs than your average goby. You will have to setup a 10gal breeder tank to breed cocepodes in order to keep a mandrin. Its not easy. Once you have the madarin healthy eating pods you can slowly switch him over to frozen foods. Some mandarins will never eat frozen foods. I would suguest putting off trying to keep a mandarin until you get a much larger tank so you can skip the pod breeding.

[Big_Pun]

what do pods look like i was doing some cleaning and noticed these lil white things on my glass in the back corner, bout the size of a grain of sand or smaller about 20-30 of them. dont worry i wont put a madarin in there just wondering what they where. i think ill work on my 65 then

[CoryDude]

Check your tank out at night with a flashlight. Isopods are the larger flea size things scurrying about the rocks. Copepods are a bit smaller. They'll usually gather on the glass near the light beam. Google images has a lot of pics of both.

IMO, your tank is a bit small for a mandarin goby. They usually need a 55 or larger with lots of live rock. But, with a refugium, you might be able to keep one.

[FactoryKTMmotocross46]

you should get a green spotted. i know a few ppl who have spotted madarins and they all eat frozen food including mine. copopods are not really visible to the naked eye.

[alton]

Coral Magazine has a great article on raising Mandarins. Jordan has copods that can get you started and he can tell you how to raise them. The big issue with Mandarins is they feed so slow, so if you try to keep them in a community tank they always lose out when feeding time comes around. If you have a 29 then line it with rubble and sand to create a natural landscape for pods to raise. Also a hang on the back fuge would be nice so as they get crowded they can over flow into the tank and become fresh food for your fish. PE Mysis is suppose to be a good food for Mandarins

[msmith619]

I have always wanted a Mandarin and have done a lot of reading. Here is what I have summarized from multiple sources:
*Mandarins rarely accept prepared food and almost always die from starvation if your tank does not have enough pods.
*Recomended minimum tank size is generally recommended to be 100 gallons to maintain a healthy pod population to maintain 1 Mandarin.
*The tanks will ideally contain lots of live rock and have been established at least a year to have a healthy pod population. Refugia help to also supply pods.
*Target Mandarins seem more likely to accept frozen foods or pellets.
*There are tank-bred Mandarins available that are usually more willing to accept pellets and frozen foods.
*Most bottom dwelling gobies will compete with Mandarins for the same food source.
*Mandarins eat S L O W L Y and often starve if there is competition for their food.

Take in mind these are generalizations I have gleamed from many different web sites and each fish is unique and these rules may not always apply.
Mike

[envy]

a thing not posted in msmith post is that you can only keep one mandarin per tank

i have a scooter and a mandarin in the same tank but both accept frozen.

[Rychek]

a thing not posted in msmith post is that you can only keep one mandarin per tank

i have a scooter and a mandarin in the same tank but both accept frozen.


Keeping more than one mandarin is quite possible, if you take the necessary steps. Keeping a scooter and a mandarin is no different than keeping two mandarins.

Something to keep in mind with dragonettes is that they eat constantly throughout the day. Even if they will eat frozen/pellet food, that will not be sufficient food to maintain a healthy dragonette long term (unless you feed many times throughout the day).

[envy]

Keeping more than one mandarin is quite possible, if you take the necessary steps.

i wouldn't doubt it is possible but i have yet to hear of and/or see someone have two mandarins together.


Keeping a scooter and a mandarin is no different than keeping two mandarins.



It is different in keeping the scooter and mandarin. Two mandarins will fight with each other unless it is a pair and even then I wouldn't doubt they might fight. I tried this once and she(Psychedelic mandarin) killed the male. I have a female Psychedelic mandarin and a female scooter blenny that i have had for 2.5 years and they are fine with each other never had a problem with them and they both took to frozen food as soon as they went into my tank. I bought both at the same time and went in with no problems.

[MeteorFlower]

I have also found that spotted mandarins tend to accept frozen foods more readily than the green mandarins. In a tank that small, I would recommend setting up a zooplankton refugium to generate food for the mandarin. It's always better to assume your mandarin won't eat frozen food and make sure you have what he needs to survive if he doesn't. That way, if he ever does start to eat frozen food, you'll be pleasantly surprised!

[msmith619]

Good ideas on Mandarin feeding. Check these links out.
Mandarin Diner:
http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-02/nftt/index.php
Mandarin Feeding station:
http://www.marinefish-uk.co.uk/forums/index.php?showtopic=14007

Mike

[vman181]

i wouldn't doubt it is possible but i have yet to hear of and/or see someone have two mandarins together.



It is different in keeping the scooter and mandarin. Two mandarins will fight with each other unless it is a pair and even then I wouldn't doubt they might fight. I tried this once and she(Psychedelic mandarin) killed the male. I have a female Psychedelic mandarin and a female scooter blenny that i have had for 2.5 years and they are fine with each other never had a problem with them and they both took to frozen food as soon as they went into my tank. I bought both at the same time and went in with no problems.

Check this out. Marc has had two for a while and even has some info about them on his site. He also has some videos under the media section on Mandarins.

http://www.melevsreef.com/mandarin_care.html

http://www.melevsreef.com/mandarin_diner.html

http://www.melevsreef.com/links.html

[Big_Pun]

thanks everyone for the help, i know what my goal is now before i get a mandarin, ill problly setup my 65 and either put my 29 or 20 as a fuge or use an ac110 and mod it as a fuge.

[moe]

Hey stangchris,

I know a thing or two about mandarin's having one for well over a year and they being my fav fish. I have study them and read up on them. One thing is that (like someone mention earlier post) there not goby, the dragonets. Yes they need copods, I would say if your tank is well establish then go ahead and get one. Even if it a 29g. As long it is establish and have enough pods for the Mandarin.

That way you could establish your other tank and the same time get him use to eating frozen food. Mandarin will eat frozen food eventually. I have not gotten one the has not or seen one that doesn't eat frozen food.

Goby's...funny enough I have a lawnmower goby and they are bud's. Mandarins does very well with other gobies (or other fish for that matter), even to the point that they will stick together. (This is from mine observation). However with there own kind (dargonnetts) it's a different story. When it come to the same spices, or there cousin the psychedelic, competition could be a *****.

They will fight with one another till the death. So I won't recommend more than one for a tank that size. I would say if your going to mate them, make sure you have a female. The way to tell is the dorsal fin. It much shorter than the male. By that you really have to look at them really.

I have LFS people tell me they had female. And when I took them home they turn out to be males. So study the fin very well, by short I mean the fin when expanded, it's more attached to the body than the male which is more flamboyant. That's the best way I could describe it. (Unless someone could do it better).

Over all a Mandarine is a very beautiful fish to have and just watch. At fist they tend to be very shy (this is where the rock come in play). But I notice they do recognize who feed them, then you'll see more of them. In the other hand when I had visitor, he would become shy and only would come out to graze on the rock.

[Rychek]

i wouldn't doubt it is possible but i have yet to hear of and/or see someone have two mandarins together.



It is different in keeping the scooter and mandarin. Two mandarins will fight with each other unless it is a pair and even then I wouldn't doubt they might fight. I tried this once and she(Psychedelic mandarin) killed the male. I have a female Psychedelic mandarin and a female scooter blenny that i have had for 2.5 years and they are fine with each other never had a problem with them and they both took to frozen food as soon as they went into my tank. I bought both at the same time and went in with no problems.

I have a green mandarin and a target mandarin in my 90 gal tank (both female), so it can be done. However, the smaller target mandarin is the alpha. They don't fight, but the target will chase the green away from certain areas of the tank. I've had the green since last summer and the target since last fall. The green eats frozen brine/mysis, but I haven't seen the target eat anything but live pods yet.

[allan]

I've seen a tank here in SA with two manderins in it. A spotted and a phsychedelic. I believe the owner stated that they get into a couple of scuffles, but generally speaking they do well together.

I want to get a manderin but plan on waiting until I have a year with my tank.

[OrionN]

Mandarins are easy fish to keep it you can provide food for them. They never get sick; tolerate a wide range of abuse if they have their food. There are rare report of Mandarin eating non-live food out there but don't bet on it. My estimate is that this is less than 1%. In order to keep Mandarin you have to make sure that you have enough live food for it. I have had pair of Mandarins that spawned every 7-10 days. Mandarin pair usually ignores each other until spawn time which is right before the light go out. They perform a mating dance, swimming intertwine with each other rising from sand surface to the top, releasing eggs and sperms as they doing so. Often this goes on for15 minutes or so. It is very neat and beautiful. The day that they mate, the female stomach will be so engorge of eggs that it looks like she will bust. One can easily predict the mating day by just looking at the female. Of course they must be well fed in order to spawn.
Regarding Mandarin dragonet only, Synchiropus splendidus, (I have not kept other type of dragonet since I think they are by far the most beautiful). They will fight unless you keep a pair. We all know that two male will fight. A few people report that two female will not, but I don’t know how reliable this is because a male may broke off his first dorsal spine and will look just like a female. I have bought two mandarin thinking that they are male and female just to find out that they are really two male. I have had a large female that fight and chase a smaller male until I trade her for a smaller female (I like to get smallest fish I can rather than largest)
In order to keep Mandarin, you have to have aquarium full of live food. I am keeping small female Mandarin in a 30 g cube at this time. She is healthy and gain lots of weight sine I put her in this tank about 1 month ago. This is a mature aquarium with sand bed, and top 2 inches or so of the surface is covered with small shell. This is a safe haven for small crustaceans and worms. This tank only other fish is a pair of A. percula. There are so many crustaceans in this tank, and no predation, that I can see the crustacean including “pods” and mysis shrimps during the day. I enclose a picture of the tank and picture of the sand bed below. I set up the sand bed specifically so that I can keep a Mandarin. I wish I got a male instead a female, because I think she is getting eggs but I am not sure how her body will deal with the eggs when there are no male around. I don’t think this tank will support another Mandarin. If you want to ask more specific question, I would be happy to try my best to reply.

here is a link to the picture of my Mandarin pair
I am not sure if you can see them unless you sign up to ReefCentral.com
http://reefcentral.com/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=158158&papass=&sort=1&thecat=500

here is a picture of my 30 g cube tank:
http://home.grandecom.net/~mnguyen/FTS20090405.01.jpg

here is a close up pictuer of the top of my sand bed
http://home.grandecom.net/~mnguyen/IMG_0342.jpg

[moe]

Nice setup, and nem. Is that the clowns that are spawning the egg for TCT? OOOOOOooooooopppsss didn't mean to highjack.

Where are the Mandarine? I can't see them.

[OrionN]

Thanks. I only have this particular Mandarin for the last 1 month. She still shy and not come to the front yet thus I could not take a picture of her. I will try to get one and post it as soon as I can get one. This is a young clown pair not spawn yet.

[Big_Pun]

thanks orionN, is that pile of shell for the pods to grow/hide in

[OrionN]

Small crustaceans requires cracks and crevices to feel comfortable and breed in. Looking in my sand, shells pile I can see many species of crustaceans in addition to copopods and amphipods and mysis shrimps. Many are quite a bit smaller than copopods which are perfect food for Mandarins