So.... New Mandarin.

xXLeafeonXx

xXLeafeonXx

New member
I bought a new Mandarin and saw it in the store eat frozen food. I put it in my tank and fed it and it didn't eat. Well it was hiding so I'm not really sure if it eat or not. Will it eat later? Is it still adjusting to the tank?
 
I fish eating from another source is never guaranteed to eat the same for you. Most likely just adjusting. Mandarins spend time in and lout of rock work. Also what size tank?
 
No offense, but I doubt that your mandarin will make it in your tank.

They need large, established tanks with plenty of copepods available in the LR/sandbed. And even then, it's no guarantee that they'll live long.
 
Sorry but you will not get one single person here that agrees about a 10 gallon being sufficient. That's the point food. Even if it eats prepare food, they eat non stop and will slowly starve in a tank less than 75 gallons.... Good luck
 
There have been a lot of people successfully keeping mandarins in as little as 10 gallons. It takes a lot of work but can be done. Saying a mandarins that eats frozen will starve in anything less than a 75 gallon is silly. I have 2 dragonets in a 65 for almost a year without issue.
 
Any post about mandarins that start with "it eats frozen" don't really understand the issue with mandarins or their physiology. Mandarins have no stomach and must eat almost constantly to get the appropriate nutritional quantity and quality. Can they be kept in a smaller tank with exceptional effort? Absolutely. However a mandarin is the fish most often killed by inexperienced or insufficiently knowledgeable aquarists. If the OP has the mandarin surviving after a year, I will be happy to revise my prognosis.
 
snorvich said:
Any post about mandarins that start with "it eats frozen" don't really understand the issue with mandarins or their physiology. Mandarins have no stomach and must eat almost constantly to get the appropriate nutritional quantity and quality. Can they be kept in a smaller tank with exceptional effort? Absolutely. However a mandarin is the fish most often killed by inexperienced or insufficiently knowledgeable aquarists. If the OP has the mandarin surviving after a year, I will be happy to revise my prognosis.
Click to expand...

This.

These guys take work and need a stable environment. You will be fighting a major uphill battle in a tank so small.

If you plan on keeping her, then you need to take appropriate steps to make sure she has what she needs to thrive. I would personally advise returning her.
 
20 gallon is too small for a mandarin, especially a new tank. try frozen food nutramar ova. I heard good things with mandarin accepting it as food.
 
Any post about mandarins that start with "it eats frozen" don't really understand the issue with mandarins or their physiology. Mandarins have no stomach and must eat almost constantly to get the appropriate nutritional quantity and quality. Can they be kept in a smaller tank with exceptional effort? Absolutely. However a mandarin is the fish most often killed by inexperienced or insufficiently knowledgeable aquarists. If the OP has the mandarin surviving after a year, I will be happy to revise my prognosis.
Click to expand...

I hate it when I agree with Snorvich
 
DjScRiBbLe said:
Lol dragonets in a 65 is 10 gal shy of a 75 so ya basically doesn't dis prove my theory
Click to expand...

Yeah and I have 2 in a 65 so yes it does.

I also had a ed scooter in a 25 gallon for almost a year before I upgraded. It took work but she was fat and healthy being spot fed frozen daily.
 
It's sad how many people are misinformed and how many continue to pass on incorrect info on the care of mandarins.
They eat 1-3 pods per minute, if you can not provide that they will starve out, and it could take some time before they do, and many will confuse this as being successful.
75g per mandarin w/ equal amount of LR is the general guideline of bare minimum needed for long term success.
In a 20g tank all you are providing is a slow death.
 
In addition to what has already been stated, I believe that most people loose track of the fact that larger tanks = more space for live rock = more space for pods to live, hide, breed, and feed = more pods reproducing = more pods left to reproduce and be eaten after some have been consumed by a mandarin.

Bottom line is you can pack a 20g full of pods, but because of the limited amount of LR it can hold, the mandarin will have no problem at all picking over every single piece of LR in that tank, and eating the majority of pods that thank can hold in a single day. Unless you are adding pods at least a couple of times a week, the only way this can work is to have the tank connected to a much larger refugium in which the pods can live and reproduce before being pumped in to the tank on a regular consistent, and somewhat constant basis (which nullifies the reason for having a 20g tank to begin with)...

Best of luck!!!
 
NYCBOB said:
try frozen food nutramar ova. I heard good things with mandarin accepting it as food.
Click to expand...

+1 Mine eat this as a supplemental food. Even better, Google "dragonets den" (probably won't let me post the link here), and use that to feed your Mandys ova, while keeping the other fish out.
 
I have actually done what you are considering doing.
I thought I knew what I was doing. I WAS WRONG.
In early 2009, I bought a 1" female mandarin. I trained her to eat frozen. That took a couple of months of her in a 5g by herself, with pods added daily, and feeding her newly hatched artemia daily, then newly hatched mixed with frozen. To provide pods to hunt, I replaced the LR in her tank through every other day with a piece from one of our other 3 tanks. To be sure we had enough of a population for her, I cultured pods, and I purchased pods, and I did the LR swaps in and out of her tank. It was a nightmare. We moved her into the 20g tall once she started eating frozen, and shortly thereafter added a large male, then moved them to a 45 cube. They started spawning 2 months after being introduced.
We had a spawning pair of mandarins in a small cube from 2009-2011 (we lost them in August 2011 when we moved unfortunately). I am not exaggerating when I say that was the most expensive pair of fish we have ever owned. We did have a HOB refugium, and I supplemented daily with freshly hatched artemia every day we owned them aside from the 2 weeks we were on our honeymoon, and I cultured pods, and they both ate frozen, and it still cost not hundreds but thousands of dollars to keep buying sufficient pods to maintain them in spawning condition. I kept a spreadsheet. We spent a fortune on those two fish.
I would not recommend this.
Because it was so hard to manage this, I did not purchase another mandarine even though they are one of my favorite fish until this January, after our 205g DT had been up and running for over a year and had a thriving pod population. We currently supplement pods for our girl on a weekly basis. I culture tigger pods on the windowsill, and I buy pods from the live food bar at the LFS.
So far, I'm in to my new girl about $80 in pods, and we are only in February. I've had her for 5 weeks.
 
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