Do not get a mandarin if...

[Sk8r]

...your tank is under 50 gallons with a MATURE 20 gallon fuge feeding it pods. And that's for ONE very small mandy or scooter blenny.

A very few mandys will eat other things occasionally but the nutrition may not be there. Their natural diet is pods, and they can empty a 30.00 bottle of pods in an hour and a half. If you are not continually growing a colony of pods in a very stable fuge, they will eat through their food supply and starve.

Do not keep them in a 50 with, eg, a wrasse, or other fish that competes for pods. The tank cannot sustain them both. Do not get a pair if you do not have a large tank, say, 100 gallons, with a large fuge producing pods.

 

[snorvich]

Sk8r's tank size recommendation is actually aggressive; I would recommend an even larger minimum size if you want to insure success.

 

[Threshold]

I would recommend an even larger minimum size if you want to insure success.

Steve, please say a 75 gallon DT and 30 sump is sufficient! (A mandy is my dream fish.)

 

[Reefer54]

Threshold

I kept a mandy and ruby red dragonet in a 75g DT with 75g sump FULL of LR and LS. This tank had a lot of LR (some 200 lbs + between DT and sump), but it supported a Bangaii that would only eat live food (which i very rarely offered)....between the shrimp reproducing and the pods, all 3 fish were live food only, and they thrived.

I believe the key that both Sk8r and Snorvich are stressing is that your display MUST be supported with continuously high volumes of pods (be it from rearing or in-line fuge, etc., not necessarily that a particular volume dt\sump is a minimum.

IF you can get a 30 gallon sump to produce that number of pods, i would be led to say you are in the minority......which means you will have to consider food competition in your stocking list. But every tank and owner and financial disposition is different.

good luck, have fun.

 

[Threshold]

you will have to consider food competition in your stocking list.

I am avoiding anything else that eats pods -- they're all for the mandarin.

 

[rich_one]

This is a superb sticky. Thanks!

-Rich

 

[Sk8r]

50 with a MATURE fuge of 20 gallons space. And one of the tiniest mandys. But the bigger the tank, and the bigger the fuge, the better hope of success.

 

[chueu]

I wished that you stickies this last year ��

 

[OllieDog]

I think a mass of rock is just as important, if not more so, then the size of the tank. There is a new ultra minimalistic approach to many tanks these days, where people have very very little live rock and large open swimming areas. In these tanks, They could easily be 100 gallons, but most of it is open sand, and only 20-30 lbs of dense branch rock. These type of tanks do not provide the environment for pods to breed at rates high enough to keep a mandarin. Its not always just about tank size. its about having a ton of real estate for the pods for have a large breeding population.

 

[rt67ghy]

I have a 180 gallon DT with a 50 gallon sump. I see pods in my sump where I have a refugium with lights and and plenty of cyno bacteria growing. In the next chamber I have an ATS and the light from there is allowing pods to grow. I have approx 300 lbs of live rock but I still have to harvest pods from another tank every week just to keep up with its feeding requirements. My tank is 11 months old and used to have a lot of very large pods before the mandarin had them for lunch. Now I have set up a 20 gallon tank just to grow pods with lights on 18 hrs-a-day. So it's not easy. Please think very carefully before you get a mandarin and do NOT keep a lawnmower blenny with it. These blennies scrape everything off the back wall and rocks and mainly eat the pods. I made that mistake and now it's impossible to catch the blenny without tearing my tank down.

 

[Sk8r]

Yep. Here's a calculation I ran on how many pods a single mandy can eat: 2000 pods every hour and a half, based on their usual hunt and peck rate per minute. This adds up to 12 hours of daylight/twilight, so 24,000 a day. Times 30 for the average month: 720,000 pods a month. Counting that those bottles of pods they sell contain about 2000 pods, well, the bottles are great for getting started, but they can't sustain the fish.

TO set up for pods, get some good clean cheato from an active fuge. The cheato is going to come in with pods, nearly a certainty. That is your seed population. Feeding your fish mysis shrimp adds another food source: eggs travel frozen with the shrimp, and hatch. I've constantly had mysis colonies in my tanks. Amphipods are a bit large for them, but they might. I've never observed it.
The reports on longterm survival on mandys raised on other foods are not encouraging.

 

[brett559]

Would flasher and fairy wrasses compete for pods? How about a flame angel? Tangs?

 

[Sk8r]

Wrasses are a no-go. Probably a lawnmower blenny is, as above. Angels and tangs, no. I had a mandy once that idolized a purple tang so much that, though pods were her obsession, she'd eat sinking pellet just because he was eating it. I watched the performance. If he was eating, she would. And she followed him everywhere, when ordinarily mandys are completely oblivious to other fish. But never depend on that sort of thing happening.

 

[Paul B]

My mandarins and ruby red dragonettes are spawning as they always do. (so are my bluestripe pipefish) The secret to those types of fish is a target feeder such as this that I fill with new born brine shrimp every day. They will live in my old tank but I have so many pod eaters and I want all of my paired fish to spawn, and they all are.



Here is a video

 

[Sk8r]

Paul B's entry is an example of how much care these beautiful little fellows can take, and how rewarding it is when you do: the brine shimp are a supplement, not the mainstay that pods are, nutritionally, but certainly they appreciate the feeder---and note the round stomach on the male. Bottom line, they aren't a push-button, I-see-it-I-want-it sort of fish. They're hardy in the right tank, but they can push a marginal tank's resources right over the edge very fast. It's a case of planning many aspects of your tank to accommodate even one, and accommodating a pair takes a mature tank with resources dedicated to them.

 

[Paul B]

Actually, I feel that new born shrimp are better than real copepods. Until they get a few hours old anyway. A new born brine shrimp is little more than a sack of oil. That oil is very nutritious. A real copepod is an adult animal that is healthy, but mostly shell. It of course is an excellent food and a natural food for a mandarin but in a tank a mandarin (as Sk8r stated) will eat all your pods in a few days. My tank is very old and there are pods all over the place but I have a mating pair of mandarins, a mating pair of ruby red dragonettes, a mating pair of blue stripe pipefish, a mating pair of clown gobies and a pair of razor shrimpfish that all eat pods. The newborn brine shrimp along with the feeder not only keeps these fish healthy, but it also keeps them spawning. I am not just talking a few weeks, I am talking decades. Here is a copepod. Picture courtesy of Sarah Egner
Director of Research and Development
Marine Resources Development Foundation

 

[brett559]

So you can't keep a mandarin with any type of wrasse? Really?

 

[Clowny88]

Feeding your fish mysis shrimp adds another food source: eggs travel frozen with the shrimp, and hatch. I've constantly had mysis colonies in my tanks.

So frozen mysis typically have frozen eggs with them? Any brand reccomendations? I plan on adding a mandarin in a year so building that food source as much as possible.

 

[Sk8r]

Dunno, I just buy what's available and ultimately a colony of mysis turns up in the rockwork or fuge: I have a sand/rock/cheato fuge that's quite messy, and pretty prolific.

 

[Sk8r]

Your ability to keep mandys with competing fish relates to tank size and fuge size. Monster tanks can do more than little tanks, but it takes a lot of production to feed a fish that eats roughly 9000 pods a day (more, if he can get it) plus his mate, which is 18,000 pods a day. Every pod-eating fish, even if he eats somewhat less, is an added burden. Are 18,000 pods a day born in your tank? Depends on tank size. Or as I reckoned it in another post: "To run the math, there are 86400 seconds in 24 hours...and given 12 hours of dark when it is not eating (it actually eats before the lights come on...that is 43200 seconds of daylight, divided by 5 (every five seconds)---meaning that a mandy eats about 8640 pods a day, or 720 an hour. Two thousand pods, if fed to it in the required concentration, will be eaten in less than 3 hours. If you have a pair---do the math. You need at least 100 gallons supported by a very large, strong fuge with cheato and live rock."