ORA mandarins?
- Thread starter snorvich
- Start date
olemiss reb
Molon Labe
My pair of blues took to nls pellets immediately and eat with vigor, but my LFS said the feedback from other customers was less than stellar. The other customers all had target mandarins. My LFS only got the one pair of blues so I do not know if I got lucky with mine or the blues are adapting better than the targets.
VacavilleFC3S
New member
sounded like a good idea, but from what i read it's the same problems getting them to eat as WC. and $50 for a $15 fish isn't nice to think about either.
duncaholic
New member
Any time someone successfully breeds and rears the larva of a pelagic spawner my hat goes off to them, but the ones my LFS has gotten have not succesfully taken to prepared foods.
Just because the fish is raised in captivity doesn't mean it changes behavior... You can't put them in community tanks and expect them to compete. Like great they eat prepared foods like mysis, brine, or pellets but they are still going to be easily intimidated and people need to plan the tank for them, or have a huge tank where they can forage.
What is good about the captive raised fish is that the idea is hopefully you aren't getting an extremely emaciated fish that has just traveled half way around the world, that has no taste for food at all, even if the pods are practically swimming in its mouth.
I saw the ones at MACNA they had on display and they had a bunch in a small tank of their own and turned the pumps off to feed and none of them went crazy for prepared foods, so they are still difficult to keep and you gotta know what you are getting into.
What is good about the captive raised fish is that the idea is hopefully you aren't getting an extremely emaciated fish that has just traveled half way around the world, that has no taste for food at all, even if the pods are practically swimming in its mouth.
I saw the ones at MACNA they had on display and they had a bunch in a small tank of their own and turned the pumps off to feed and none of them went crazy for prepared foods, so they are still difficult to keep and you gotta know what you are getting into.
velvetelvis
Active member
Exactly. I had an ORA target mandarin briefly who wouldn't eat. I gave her to a friend who works on a coral farm and keeps her in a huge frag system filled with softies and polyps, where she's thriving. I blame myself, not ORA or the fish--if I'd thought about it and done some research on feeding mandarins, instead of just jumping at the chance to get a captive-bred mandarin, I would have realized that putting a slow-moving, deliberate feeder in an SPS-dominated system with strong current (2 Vortech MP10s in a 34G) was a bad idea. As it turned out, I didn't have the proper accomodations for the fish--or, I have to admit, the patience to turn off powerheads for extended periods of time and target-feed the fish.
A lot of people have said that their WC mandarins are hardier and better eaters than the ORA mandarins, but those few WC that are good eaters probably represent a fraction of the total population who are collected and then die of starvation in captivity. I applaud ORA's efforts to make mandarin-keeping more ethical and sustainable, even though I do think they should have emphasized that the fish were still going to need special care. As I found out myself, regardless of origin, mandarins are never going to be an "easy" fish to keep. It's the aquarist's responsibility to know what s/he's getting into.
