Question about mandarins

[jscarlata]

i recently put a small mandarin in my tank, tank is a 90 mixed reef, been running the 90 for about a year but the rock is about 2 years old. so far it seems to be doing just fine, what i want to know is what signs to look for to know if its starting to go hungry or there isn't enough food...will its behavior change or will it just hide and starve..
right now its in and out of the rocks, hovering and pecking away, very calm and methodical. it sleeps in the back right corner and seems to be not afraid of me, although i struggle to get it on camera...its not out in the open in front, only in the rocks and along the back, today i saw it come up to the top of the roccks on one side but not for long...always doing the hover/hunt/peck thing..
i got a shipment from reefs2go today, effcitively dumping over 2000 pods into my fuge, the display and a standalone 5g tank with air rubble rock and cheato

 

[SjadeD]

If he's pecking he's eating. If he stops pecking he's not. They can go a long time without food before they die. My female jumped into the overflow once for about a month before I found her. She was almost starved, skinny and small. She gained her weight back in a few weeks and is doing well. Had her for 5 years and the male for 4.

 

[fatoldsun]

If you hold a small flashlight to the tank after lights out in about a minute you'll see swarms of VERY SMALL pods (copepods) come to the light sort of like bugs to a light out side. (Same thing if you've ever gone crabing at night - crustaceans act alike I guess) anyway this should help ease your mind that there's plenty for the mandarin to eat

 

[jscarlata]

thanks all...so far so good then i suppose...
lets say for some reason my tank isnt produicing enough pods and he starts to go hungry, is it typical that they just waste away in hiding, or do they become more active swimming in the open etc or behave in an otherwise odd way to indicate an issue?

 

[Gpettit86]

Extreme but it works

Extreme but it works

I started a separate tank just for copes. I got a 10 gallon with an air pump and ordered some copepods online and when i do a water change i replace the water in the copepod tank. I have more than i'll ever need at any time.

To feed the copepod tank i culture my own phytoplankton which is really easy to do as well.

I've seen a lot of benefits from doing this. All my fish seem to be getting healthier and fat. The other nice thing about it is that you don't have to limit what other fish will compete for food with your mandarin.

Every week I throw in a couple hundred copepods and try to spot feed the mandarin. most get away but he grabs a few and picks off the rest through out the week.

 

[jscarlata]

thanks! ive got a 5.5g tank setup with some rubble, cheato and i put some pods in there yseterdayn from my r2g shimpent.. i dont have phyto but i threw in some crushed flake, and some reef pearls for food...not many places carry live phyto near me...is that all they will live on?

 

[Gpettit86]

they will eat almost anything from my experience. The reason I use phyto is cause now that i have the culture set up and going its free. I got the starter culture from online. I'd have to look to see what the name was but it was like $20... The pods are great tho... my orange back fair wrasse loves them too and my clowns will pick one off here and there

 

[Paris_Wiley]

I have never had one starve to death so I am not sure exactly what behavior they exhibit if they are starving, but I agree with fatoldson that if you can see pods at night time in your tank then the mandarins would be in good shape. If you cannot see any pods they might stil be ok but I woudl personally look for a wayt to add some to the tank, such as a refugium or possibly adding a piece of live rock from a tank that had plenty of them.

 

[Angel*Fish]

It sounds like you're probably fine. If you notice he's losing weight, then you'd know you'd have to do something different. But a starving mandarin shouldn't just hide,you would see him losing weight first.

Take care to research when adding any new fish. Everything can be in a lovely balance and then a substrate feeding wrasse is added who eats all the pods. You wouldn't keep a mandarin and a 6 line wrasse, for example. Those are obvious examples - be sure and check.

 

[fatoldsun]

My 6-line and madarin get along fine. The 6-line eats anything I drop in and goes after amphopods more than copepods as much as I can tell. Mandarin munches on copepods ALL day long. It's constant. Weird thing is - they sleep togeather. Neighboring bolt holes. Same place every night. I'm not saying it'll be fine every time but if you have a mature system it could be fine...

 

[Angel*Fish]

My 6-line and madarin get along fine. The 6-line eats anything I drop in and goes after amphopods more than copepods as much as I can tell. Mandarin munches on copepods ALL day long. It's constant. Weird thing is - they sleep togeather. Neighboring bolt holes. Same place every night. I'm not saying it'll be fine every time but if you have a mature system it could be fine...

If your Mandarin goes missing an eyeball, it will be the that the six line wrasse has munched it off. They are notorious for killing mandarins, sometimes by attacking them and sometimes by just blinding them.

People think it's ok to keep them together because it usually doesn't happen until the six line reaches maturity (think one or two years). Perhaps it doesn't always happen, but I don't see the point of risking it.

If a tank has enough pods for two fish, a really nice display is a mandarin pair. They are easy to pair (just get a male and female with the male being the larger fish) and they will reward you with a lovely mating dance at dusk most nights.

 

[jscarlata]

thanks guys...fwiw i have read many an article and thread on mandarins, i waited over a year to add one, i cant tell you how many times my 9 year old asked to get one over the last 13 months...
i just wanted to be sure it was ok or to find out if there were any warning signs to look for. i dont have a sixline, but i do have a mystery wrasse, my mystery seems more interested in killing snails and hermits than in copepods, but i know he eats amphipods. I do have a fuge, and as i mentioned initially, i just this week added two 1000count bags of mixed pods from reefs2go, most went into the fuge and display during lights out, but i put some into a standalone 5.5g tank with air, cheato and some LR pieces. i'll try the flashlight thing this weekend...