mandarin question to the pros

nightfire

nightfire

New member
hey guys i know i said i'd be geting firefish and a few others and i will but seeing the mandarins that aquatic critter had for sale the other day paula likes them alot and so do i, i know they can be picky eaters, but as mel has said he had then eating frozen foods and i've seen others do it, if i found me one that eats frozen wouldnt that help alot in keeping him? they are very peaceful from what ive seen, i love their colors and paula likes their fins and how they flap kinda like a humming bird ......so feeding them is really the only big problem with them?
 
Mandrins

Mandrins

nightfire said:
hey guys i know i said i'd be geting firefish and a few others and i will but seeing the mandarins that aquatic critter had for sale the other day paula likes them alot and so do i, i know they can be picky eaters, but as mel has said he had then eating frozen foods and i've seen others do it, if i found me one that eats frozen wouldnt that help alot in keeping him? they are very peaceful from what ive seen, i love their colors and paula likes their fins and how they flap kinda like a humming bird ......so feeding them is really the only big problem with them?
Click to expand...

I'm no expert, But the Best tank for Mandrins is at least a year old with lots of Live Rock full of Pods as this is their Prefeered food source. You may get one that eats frozen food but this is the exception not the Norm.Unless you see them eat other foods Before you buy it I would be careful that you have the proper conditions for it to survive. JMO
Bill
 
yea.. I like the mandarin, but I wouldn't get it because of the reason. ORA actually has captive bred mandarins. They are very expensive thou.
http://www.orafarm.com/products/fish/dragonets/blue-mandarin.html
In a significant advancement in Marine Ornamental Aquaculture, ORA recently introduced captive bred Mandarin Dragonets, also known as Mandarin Gobies, to the commercial aquarium market. Mandarins are exquisitely beautiful and highly desired by aquarists, but the wild-caught specimens have a reputation as being difficult to feed and maintain. Those concerns are resolved as ORA Mandarins have been raised on a variety of prepared foods. Hobbyists of all levels can now own and enjoy these easy to keep Mandarin Dragonets thanks to the research and production efforts of ORA.

The Blue Mandarin, also commonly referred to as Green Mandarin, is a member of the family Callionymidae, the Dragonets, and grows to a maximum length of 4”. They originate in the Western Pacific from the Ryukyu Islands to Australia. In the wild they are found on silty bottoms with coral and rubble. In the aquarium, it’s best to provide them with plenty of rockwork in which to hunt and hide.

ORA’s Blue Mandarins exhibit beautiful ribbon-like patterns of royal blue and green, peach and red. They can be kept in mated pairs or singly.

All of ORA’s captive bred mandarins will accept a variety of prepared frozen and dry foods upon acclimation to their new tank. They may be offered Nutramar Ova, finely chopped Hikari Frozen Blood Worms, fish roe, frozen or live baby brine shrimp, frozen daphnia, and New Life SPECTRUM Small Fish Formula pellets. Some have also shown interest in Cyclopeeze.
Synchiropus splendidus is a peaceful fish that will fare best in the established reef tank provided there are no aggressive tankmates that may compete for food.
 
Ok, First off I have one, a Spotted Mandarin. I have about 75 lbs of LR in a 56 gallon tank that was "aged" over a year before i decided to add this fish. I also have a twenty gallon sump with a large portion of it dedicated as a refuge. In this i have a football size piece of Chaetomorpha algae with A LOT of pods living in it. Now with that said, I had to take a great deal of time and effort in training this little guy to take PE Mysis shrimp. (There is a great deal of info on this subject on the net, so i won't go into detail now on how it's done). When I feed my fish, the more active fish: my Potter's angel, yellow wrasse and my perc's get fed first and once they are done I spot feed the mandarin. I use a acrylic tube attached to a syringe and with this i suck up some well rinsed mysis shrimp into it, then i inject them in sight of the mandarin. She knows now when it's feeding time just by the sight of the tube in the water. (Power Heads off when i feed)

What I'm trying to say is that it takes effort to keep one of these alive, especially if you don't have a large enough tank to support enough pods.
Thus my extra effort to make sure this fish gets the food it needs to survive.

Please think it through and read everything about these very special fish and their special needs before buying one. Hope that helps.
 
I had two mated mandarins for about 2 years or so in a 45g tank with a well populated refugium. The easiest thing to do is to see if the LFS will put some frozen pods (cyclopleeze or the SFB kind) in and see if they'll eat them. Personally, I found the younger ones to be much more ready to accept frozen pods than the larger ones. I got mine from Emerald Bay. They actually even mated a few times. It was really cool.

Brandon
 
NeveSSL said:
I had two mated mandarins for about 2 years or so in a 45g tank with a well populated refugium. The easiest thing to do is to see if the LFS will put some frozen pods (cyclopleeze or the SFB kind) in and see if they'll eat them. Personally, I found the younger ones to be much more ready to accept frozen pods than the larger ones. I got mine from Emerald Bay. They actually even mated a few times. It was really cool.

Brandon
Click to expand...

You say that you "had" them. Do you still have them?
 
I did say "had" them, which means I do not have them. The whole tank just about crashed, so I took it down and sold it. My male died for unknown reasons. I gave my female to a friend.

Brandon
 
I was too. :) This was about 1.5 years ago, though. It sucked, but I'll get more later. :)

When they first met:

DSC_3882.jpg


Here they are mating:

DSC_6187.jpg


Brandon
 
nice pics brandon and thanks guys for the advice....i'd have to wait and see after i put in my new sump and finish my new stand....tank is aged pretty well and finally almost done with my flippin hair algae problem which is soooooo awesome....the tanks looking like a tank with fish and corals and not just a box of lawn grass lol thanks again guys
 
They were beautiful! One of the reasons i got one, but i did know what i was getting into before i bought one. I tried one in a 75 gallon mixed reef 17 years ago, but back then i could keep it alive.
 
Anyone had a mandarin alive longer than three years on here? Just wondering, that is the record I have found so far...
 
The real problem with supplementing frozen food is that Mandarins consume huge quantities of food throughout the day. You can't just feed them once or twice a day and expect them to thrive. If you don't have enough pods to sustain them between feedings, they will starve. To feed frozen foods often enough you would have to overfeed the system and end up with nutrient problems. The solution is to keep a a breeding place in your sump or refugium where the pods don't have any predators. I don't see any mention of the size of your tank or the quantity of rock and that is a factor to be considered.
 
EllieSuz said:
The real problem with supplementing frozen food is that Mandarins consume huge quantities of food throughout the day. You can't just feed them once or twice a day and expect them to thrive. If you don't have enough pods to sustain them between feedings, they will starve. To feed frozen foods often enough you would have to overfeed the system and end up with nutrient problems. The solution is to keep a a breeding place in your sump or refugium where the pods don't have any predators. I don't see any mention of the size of your tank or the quantity of rock and that is a factor to be considered.
Click to expand...
sorry i didnt post the size...many on here already know it being we are part of the same club but to refresh all....i have a 55g with a 10g sump/fuge and around 60ish lbs of LR but this will change to even bigger within the month to a 29g sump/fuge and around 100 lbs of LR....yes i still havent treated the rock mel gave me lol
 
Put that fuge on the top. ;) Passive feed. =D Lots more whole bugs that way, lol. I would advise waiting until you get the new system established - and even then, there are a lot of considerations. Do you want a wrasse, or have one already? They are pod hunters, as are many other fish (pretty much anything you see giving the evil eye to a rock) and will compete with the mandarin for all the pods. It would be a good idea to maybe plan very well for your larger tank (passive feed fuge, I'm tellin ya!) and hold off for now, I know that is dissapointing, but it would be more so to lose the mandarin just before the new tank is cycled.

Thank you so much, cce! I may have already heard about you, lol - we discuss this sometimes on our local forum, where the record so far is three. Someone told me they heard of someone on RC who had a pair for six or seven years - and you are the very first person I have ever bought the "old age" diagnosis on a mandarin from - 7 years doesn't sound too bad to me! Please tell me a little more about your set up, namely -

Size tank:
Amount of LR:
Refugium? Passive?:
Competition:
Feedings? Type? Often?:

Of course, by competition, you could leave out your tang, I am talking pod hunting competition of course. =D

Guess I better spill why I want to know - the boyfriend is pretty obsessed with this fish, like most people, and being that he has me to contend with (I can sometimes be the fish police, lol) he has set up a system designed for this fish. No competitors, passive feed fuge, the works. We are moving this system design over to a 210 gallon, and adding a female - so I am interested to hear about your success and how you managed it! =D Oh, yeah, he is almost at three years now, I think...
 
the new sump and added rock are for my already set up system but yea im not gonna just dump in a mandarin when i know all that would be new.....im the kind that know all these things we put into our tanks are living things and i try my best to make sure they thrive and not just servive but yea im gonna wait on that lil guy
 
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