Mixing Mandarins

[Mischke]

Could i put a male green mandarin in with a female target mandarin and avoid fights?

 

[love2skiutah]

Could i put a male green mandarin in with a female target mandarin and avoid fights?

How big is your tank and how much live rock do you have?

 

[Mischke]

It’s more of a hypothetical question. I don’t actually have the tank yet. I’m just a little curious if this had the ability to work.

 

[love2skiutah]

It's more of a hypothetical question. I don't actually have the tank yet. I'm just a little curious if this had the ability to work.

You could. But usually 1 of them will starve because there is not enough live rock. I have 120lbs of live rock with 1 mandarin and because I have some wrasses that eat pods and worms too, the mandarin was starving. I tried to give him away, but he ended up taking frozen mysis, so I kept him. Personally, I would never keep 2 mandarins together in my small 120 mixed reef.

 

[Mischke]

Alright, thanks i was only planning on a 90 gallon, with a sump full of live rock. I'll probably end up sticking to just one then.

 

[humaguy]

a mandy needs to eat like 150 pods an hour all day to be healthy...only a tank with a huge pod pop will keep them alive...they can eventually learn to eat brine and chopped mysis but I would not count on that happening...

 

[Mischke]

i was going to do a NPS reef with high plankton level, which should increase copepod levels, if what i've read is right. How much difference do you think this would make?

 

[SantaMonica]

Pods love to live and grow in the periphyton, which is mostly photosynthetic (algae). It would be a good question how many pods, comparatively, would live in the heavy sponge coverage of NPS setups.

 

[o2manyfish]

I keep a Green Mandarin Male, Red Mandarin Female, and a Target Mandarin. There is no fighting between the 3 of them. And they are obese. My mandarins are so well fed that they aren't even that active.

I miss having them cruise amoung the corals, mine are mostly settled on the bottom of the tank.

The oldest is 3+ years in the tank. The red Mandarin was added last about a year ago.

Dave B