Yasha Goby, pistol shrimp with mandarin compatability

MisterP

New member
I 'm looking at a yasha goby/randalli pistol shrimp pair and want to know if this would be compatible with a mandarin since they kind of share the same space near the bottom.

This is for my 20 g Nano tank.

Also for those that will inevetibly comment on a 20 g being to small to support a mandarin with food. I will be using reef nutrition tigger pods as well as other live pods every 2-3 days.
 
I have kept that combo before and they are fine. The yasha stays in its cave and the mandarin cruises around the whole tank looking for pods. Keeping a mandarin in a nano is possible, just expensive. We had a spawning pair in our 45g cube a few years ago. Sadly they did not transition well when we moved. We are on the hunt for a pair now but you have to be very picky when they come in. Also we would love some of the ora tank bred pairs, but they have not been available in a while.
 
20g isn't suitable for a mandarin. It will quickly deplete the pods population and possibly starve to death.
 
Thanks.

Did you guys just supplement pods like I plan to do? What was your favorite, or their favorite pod I should say, something like the Tigger Pods or other live pod?

Thanks,Sugar but it will be feed. No need to comment I totally understand the requirement of this fish.
 
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Gotcha, just standard advice. I kept one in a 30g once and it never did take to prepared foods, even Mysis was rejected. I eventually gave it to someone with a 90 gallon tank and it thrived for him.

Hopefully you can find one that is already accepting pellets.

BTW, the yasha and pistol combo is fantastic. I kept a pair in a pico. So much fun to watch.
 
No worries SM, I just hate to get into a whole thing about the mandarin. I totally understand and plan to make a small, maybe 5"x5", in tank refugium plus supplementing pods like every couple of days.

Finding one on pellet would be great, hopefully I can get on ethrough ORA.
 
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just a heads up about the mandy.

i've had very good success feeding mine Nutramar Ova, as well as making a PaulB style feeding station for her serving up live brine shrimp nauplii.

i did have the added benefit of my LFS training her on Cyclop-eeze too. but she never really went for that all that enthusiastically. the Nutramar and feeding station combo has her turning in to one fat girl though, which makes me very happy. :)

i used an old NLS pellet container, some 3/8" ID rigid airline tubing, a small funnel, and some nylon pantyhose for the mesh.

IMAG0179.jpg


http://youtu.be/fl_hnnvgbWo
 
We have been running tigger pod cultures for a while now any really like them. They are very easy to culture and you usually can get 3 months out of a culture. We also used a ton of other stuff and eventually got them to frozen. You have to make sure food settles down to the bottom and they have a chance to pick it off. Some have used mandarin diners (google it) to this effect. We used one for a while and it helped. Be prepared to step up your water changes a bit as you will be putting a lot of food in there.

Almost forgot, get live black worms as well.
 
My pleasure. I've been culturing, or I guess I should say trying to culture, tisbe pods without much success.

I've green water out the wazoo buy for some reason the pods haven't taken off.

At any rate, having three other potential food sources for her makes me feel a lot better.

It has the added bonus of helping to condition her to a particular spot to feed. So trying to get her interested in new foods also becomes easier because she now has an association with that area and food.

At any rate when we got her she actually looked pretty good, but now is downright bulbous which makes me very happy.

Good luck! She's one of my favorite fish to watch.
 
I keep a mandarin and a seahorse in my one ounce, pico nano with no problems, but I do use a skimmer, vodka dosing, ozone and a lighted refugium.
The lettuce algae and green water problems don't seem to be a concern

 
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