ORA Mandarin Dragonets!!!!!

[pweissma]

Update: I brought my green mandarin back to my LFS when it real skinny. They put it in an Elos Mini stocked with pods. It's been there for a 2-3 weeks and is still looking skinny. I'm not ready to give up on him but the store has offered me credit for its cost.

 

[CJO]

Update on my ORA green mandarin

I didn't think that ORA had released the green mandarins yet?

CJ

 

[Mr.leee]

ORA given them new names, the ora blue Mandarin is the green Mandarin and the ora green mandarin is the spotted ones.

 

[scubasteve06]

Are Mandarins harder to get to feed than red scooter dragonets? Reason why I ask is a I have a Red scooter dragonet that is awesome. Coolest fish I've owned hands down. when he raises his sail he thinks he is hot stuff. Healthiest dragonet I've ever seen. No pinched belly his sides and flanks of his tail are full and he loves kent extreme garlic infused PE mysis that I sometimes throw a little zooplankton in. I feed phytoplankton, chromaplex, zooplankton, 3 days a week for my corals so I'm pretty sure my pod populatoin is good since they have food to eat. I also take a couple drip drops of each of the above and drip it into my ball of calupera and chaeto in the fuge so the bristle stars, starfish, and amphipods and copepods have some food.

The pods that look like rolly pollies and have two little antennae that scuttle along what kind of pods are these. the majority of the ones I see in the empty snail shells I put in my fuge are these, but when I pick up the calupera these little ones jump out all over my hands and back into the water. I've got plenty of food for the guy and he gets target fed his mysis(sometimes mysis formula 2/powdered NLS pellets mixed together) with a turkey baster 3 times a day after all the other fish have been fed. Its funny also because out of all the aggressive fish I have the eel, trigger, and tangs do not even act like he is there as do the other fish. I even have a cleaner shrimp and 3 peppermint shrimp in there that the trigger and eel leave completely alone. I feed the eel once every other day market prawns soaked with a drop of kent extreme garlic.

I'd love to get a mandarin, but if I don't luck out and end up with a male will he fight with my red scooter male or vice versa. I've been looking for a female red scooter for my male and I want a spotted, green, or red mandarin I really don't care they are all beautiful. Should I wait and see to get the female red scooter first and see if there are enough pods for the two of them before adding a mandarin? I've heard they are some of the hardest fish to feed, but I figured since they are both in the dragonet family their feeding tendecies have to be similar if not very similar.

comments and all responses greatly appreciated.

 

[angelsil]

I'd love to get a mandarin, but if I don't luck out and end up with a male will he fight with my red scooter male or vice versa.

In a 125 you should be okay. I've not heard of blennies and mandarins fighting for territory, though they do compete for food.

The larger pods are usually amphipods which not all mandarins will eat. Copepods look more like a very small white spec and they are the preferred mandarin food. A single mandarin can decimate a tank's population of copepods in a few weeks. Hungry little buggers!

I wouldn't count on a mandarin from any source taking to frozen or pellet, so having a refugium as a backup is recommended. When I had my 125 set up I had a simple hang-on refugium and 2 mandarins and another goby and it worked.

 

[NCSUsalt]

^ scooters and mandarins are both dragonets and i've witnessed aggression between the two before. not saying it wouldn't often work but i'd personally keep either a pair of scooters or mandarins in a 125

 

[CJO]

ORA given them new names, the ora blue Mandarin is the green Mandarin and the ora green mandarin is the spotted ones.

Thanks for the info.

CJ

 

[pweissma]

ORA has released blue mandarins as well and there's reports of them on this thread. Read back a bunch of pages.

 

[eweston]

My LFS has an order in for the ORA mandarins this week. I was quoted around $60 each. They informed me that they wouldn't sell them for $60 unless they are feeding at the store and they ones that are not eating would be sold priced as a wild mandarins.

 

[olemiss reb]

How are y'alls doing? My pair of blues are eating NLS pellets to the point of being obese. Many, myself included, were having problems with the targets not eating pellets, is this still the case?

 

[Reef Keeper 14]

How are y'alls doing? My pair of blues are eating NLS pellets to the point of being obese. Many, myself included, were having problems with the targets not eating pellets, is this still the case?

yeah i have a male spotted ora mandarin for about two months and he pigs out on ova, mysis, and brine but hasnt touched a pellet. he is still really fat though

 

[rogerwilco357]

so

so

Woah thats a lot of mandarins in 1 spot, i thought you could only have 1 in a tank together...maybe that changed when they became tank bred?

is this video one of a mandarin feeding frenzy?

 

[badvegan]

maybe i have figured this out

maybe i have figured this out

When i got my ora man i gave him tons of food. Chopped up blood worms, dumped pods, fed different kinds of frozen food for weeks. My mandarin did not eat the first few days but eventually started eating the frozen food. Today he will eat nothing but frozen no matter what i try. My water quality has suffered and i still have hair algae from it.

Last week my mom got hers and she decided to use the melevs dinner with pellet approach. Her mandarin did not eat for a few days but she kept at it with the dinner determined to not "spoil" her fish and make it turn its nose up to pellets. About the fifth day just like mine her mandarin started eating.

I realize that this is in no way a scientific study, however i believe that many of the problems that we have had with these mans have not been the mans fault but our own. Many of us who have had bad luck with mandarins in the past were so concerned with getting our fish to eat that we provided crazy buffets of frozen and fresh chopped food and then wondered why the mandarins would not ever eat pellets.

If i had it to do over again i think i would try the melevs dinner approach with pellets for a week and then if the fish did not eat i would switch over to frozen.

 

[angelsil]

I've had my ORA spotted for about 6 weeks now. He's eating frozen only, is growing, and is healthy. I'm OK with feeding frozen, since I have a small tank and weekly water changes aren't a big deal. He primarily eats bloodworms and mysis. I haven't confirmed he's eaten Cyclop-eeze or any of the other foods I've tried.

My experience is that my mandarin didn't eat much prepared foods the first few days because he was perpetrating a copepod massacre on my existing pod population. Once he'd done that damage, he made the switch back to frozen easily.

 

[Reef Keeper 14]

update on my mandarins: My ora spotted mandarin that i got back in july of 2010 has grown significantally and eats like a pig all the time. He will eat just about all prepared foods except for pellets. Yesterday i picked up an ora blue mandarin female and she is eating very well for being in the tank for one day. She was eating pellets, blood worms, and mysis shrimp today. She seems to be picking up on prepared foods faster than my spotted mandarin did. In a couple of months i will be moving both of them into my new red sea max 250 which should be good enough for both of them, as of right now, they are in seperate 29 gallon tanks. Hopefully they will get along with eachother

 

[rgonzalez]

I've had my Spotted Mandarin since the first shipment came out last year. He's doubled in size and primarily eats NFS pellets. I'll put cyclop-eeze in there too, which he likes, but make does he loves those pellets

 

[mscarpena]

Update on my ORA green mandarin
I've had him now for almost 2 months. He had gotten really skinny in my Solana so I brought him back to my LFS where they have him in a small tank that they stock with pods. When he recovers the store will ween him back to non-live food and then I'll put him in a pico that is now cycling. (I love this store.)

I blame myself for the failure of the mandarin in my Solana. There is a misconception that these mandarins are community fish that can be kept easily with clowns etc. ORA never made such a claim and it isn't true. ORA has said that they are good to keep with sea horses. I see two main factors that led to my failure. First I have two ORA false percs in my tank. These guys are very aggressive eaters and probably intimidated the mandarin. Secondly I stocked my tank with Tigerpods twice. This likely fed the mandarin for a while but long term it could have made him reluctant to eat non-live food.

My advice to those who want to get one: If your tank doesn't support a large enough pod population think about the eating aggressiveness of your current fish. It's probably a good idea to QT the mandarin not so much for disease but to understand its eating preferences. Lastly don't feed him bottled pods unless you plan on constantly restocking and that is expensive.

So what makes you think a Mandarin in a pico is a good idea. A few pieces of food per day will not sustain them. They need pods no matter what. They constantly pick at things here and there all day.

 

[small alien]

RIP ORA Target Mandarin. Ate, but never with much vigor. Had it about two months.

 

[pweissma]

I see my post from a few months back quoted above. The mandarin never recovered and unfortunately died at the store. Glad that at least my description of the experience could perhaps save others from making a similar mistake.

 

[Ethan_W]

My mandarin lives with a pair of ORA false percs and a midas blenny, all fast swimming pigs. The mandarin cannot compete with them for food, and you should not expect it to.

I feed my clowns and midas blenny up high in the water column, while they are eating, I then target feed the mandarin on a rock on the opposite side of the tank. A mandarin will never(in my experience) swim up into the water column and compete with active swimmers for food.

You need to feed a mandarin with pumps off, and from a pipette by placing the food on the rocks or sand. They don't chase food in the water column.

You can't just toss food in the tank and expect a mandarin to be well fed.

this was exactly what i ended up doing with my spotted mandarin. turn off the flow and distract the aggressive eaters with food at the top, and spot feed the mandarin. even though my mandarin wasnt ORA it would eat brine and mysis till it looked like it was about to pop.

however sometimes i would be lazy and just drop some mysis infront of the power head. my mandarin would come out as soon as it smelled the shrimp and swim all over to gobble up as many pods as it could, even competing with the clowns and firefish