What do you guys think? Does he look ok?

O

ogredawg19

New member
I got this mandarin about two weeks ago to control pods in my tank and I've always wanted one also. What do you guys think? Does he look healthy?

TIA

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yeah, She looks healthy...given the chance she will will eat till she looks like a football. Is that in a 20gal? If so you might want to try to get her to eat frozen foods. Beacause in a 20gal she will not only "control" your pods she will wipe them out, and unless she will eat frozen foods she will starve. I tried it in my 29gal, and I had a 5gal fuge, and I tried to culture pods..still couldn't keep enough. You might want to try feeding it Articpods or cyclopeze, or frozen mysis.
 
I know, that's why I made sure that he ate frozen before I bought him. He did ate frozen mysis, but somehow he isn't in my tank. My friend told me maybe because he's finding pods still and that's what he really wants and might go back to eating frozen when there isn't anymore pods in the tank. I was worried, I thought he looks skinny. So I tried searching for mandarin pics and saw that he was pretty normal. I guess that's just how mandarins look like. I thought a healthy one would have a body that looks like a hotdog lol. Are live bloodworms and live mysis good for them too? Because my friends store sells live shrimps, and he fed that to the mandarin also.

Also if they peck on the rocks, does that mean they ate something or not always? And what's up with the smoke look a like that comes out of their gills.
 
looks like a female, smoke is just the leftover sand/denitrus.. nice looking mandarin, though second a fuge being useful.. speaking of which, pm me if you still want some chaeto, i guess i missed you earlier..
 
Hey Kenzo, sorry bout earlier. I left my house to go to emeryville today for a meeting and was planning to meet you after, but when I got there I realized I didn't write down your number anywhere to have it with me. lol . I'll definitely pick it up next week, I'm thinking about Thursday but I'll call you before then so we can talk about it. I'm converting my quarantine tank into a pods culturing tank and I'm going to put the chaetos I'm getting from you in there :).
 
Yesss! I bought some Hikari Brine Shrimp today and my mandarin accepted it. Now the only thing is that it's so hard to spot feed him because my cleaner shrimps would wait in front of the syringe and eat all the shrimps that comes out. Does anyone have any suggestion on how I can get the shrimp to the mandarin before it gets eating by everyone else?
 
spot feed the cleaner shrimps first so they're busy eating, then feed the mandarin, that's how I feed my corals =/
 
I tried that but the cleaner shrimps would go in front of the syringe while holding on to the food they already have. They were so greedy that even their antennas were grabbing food, and I've never seen that before.
 
Nice Mandarin.

In my 180 with about 300 pounds of live rock, I couldn't keep a Mandarin alive with enough food.

After studying the situation for awhile, I was pretty convinced that the several cleaner shrimp I had in the tank at the time were probably completing with it for the same foods.

I have sinced cut back to 1 cleaner shrimp in that tank. I'm hoping that the next time I add a Mandarin, I'll have better luck.

Based on my experience, a 20 gallon with competing cleaner shrimp may be an uphill battle for your Mandarin over the long term.

Since the tank is small, it will be easy for you to keep and eye on him and monitor his condition.

Best of luck,

Roy
 
I had one in my 65g that I trained to eat frozen mysis. I started with live brine, then frozen brine, then switched to mysis. I plan to try this again in my new tank. Good luck,

-A
 
Thanks, I feed her hikari enhanced brine right now. I'm going to try arcti-pods when the brines run out. Hopefully she eats that one.

Actually that's my next question, does anyone feeds with arcti-pods? Because I want to try it first before buying the whole bottle. I want to see if my mandarin would take it, because if she doesn't then I rather spend that $20 on corals or something :)

Thanks
 
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