Mandarin in a nano?

[Austrarhyncus]

This is probably something that's been asked a lot but I'll still ask.

I saw some mandarins at my LFS and it got me thinking about keeping one in my upcoming reef tank. My tank is a 2 foot shallow tank (so around 10 gallons), with an internal sump.

Could I keep maybe one or two in my tank if they're trained on frozen food?

 

[sde1500]

No. Frozen at best can supplement their diet. Their digest system is very small with no real stomach to store food I believe. Therefore they are constantly eating pods and other tiny inverts. They will very likely starve in your tank quickly. The only way it is possible would be to set up a separate pod farm. Multiple pod farms actually because with one you're still one crash away from starving fish or blowing a ton of cash on buying pods. I hesitate to even offer that suggestion since it still is a huge risk the fish die.

 

[Austrarhyncus]

Damn, alright then, I guess I'll settle for something else, I don't really wanna setup external pod farms, coz I like the clean look of a tank, so hey, I guess I'll skip the mandarins