Mandarin Goby

[Tabasco]

I have a green manderin for about a week now in my 16 gallon with plenty of live rocks. I made sure the tank was covered in pods before I added him. I also tried giving him frozen food but he did not budge. He looks fat right now and there's still so many pods everywhere. My assumption is that since there are no other competitors for pods in my tank it could be possible for it to sustain him with enough pods as well as giving enough time to let the pods reproduce and sustaining a healthy population for the manderin. Of course I could be wrong. I read a lot on people even with Hugh tanks losin manderins. Any one has any experiences with a small tank and a manderin? About 75% of my tank is filled with live rocks.

I had a blue in a 20 that was filled w/pods, about 35lbs of LR. I thought there was no way he could go through them. They were on the glass, all over the frag rack, fighting each other on the rocks. He decimated the pod population in just over a week, so I think sooner than later it will run out in your 16 unless you have a 75g sump . I made a madarin diner out of a small glass jar and was successful getting him over to frozen. Initially he wanted nothing to do w/frozen brine or pellets. I got Nutra ova and he immediately took a liking... and I use that term in relveance to a mandarins world as they do nothing fast. It took him about 3-4 hrs in real time, then he found the jar and would go in and eat a little, then leave, then come back. Once he was going in pretty regularly I started adding little bits of chopped misis and small New Spectrum Pellets. He started eating that as well, although not as eagerly as the eggs. Hermit crabs will also ge into the jar unless you make some barrier at the bottom of the jar that they can't climb over. I believe you can youtube mandarin diner and you will see what I am talking about.

Unfortunately, I went through all that and he went carpet surfing when I went out of town for the weekend. What is the deal with that... how do they know you are gone??? Why do they always do that crap when you leave??

Good luck!

 

[yOdaddy]

Did you ended up getting another? Honestly I just dug myself a hole. I'm now setting everything including another 10 gallon around this one fish to assure it is fed and happy...what am I doing?? I had a 55 gallon and the reason I downgraded was because of all the time and effort I put in. Now look hahahaha. I'm going to try that manderin diner. Thanks for the info Tabasco

 

[Tabasco]

I did not. I was very sad to find it had jumped when I returned from my trip. And it was rewarding to be able to get it onto frozen. I tried it again I would have alot quicker success and be alot more prepared, but it was nerve wracking. I felt so responsible for getting the fish. It already had a visibly sunken stomach when I bought it. I had ordered it into a LFS and they had it in a tiny holding tank in the week before I could make it to pick it up. I was nervous that it wouldn't even hunt. But it did, got a nice full belly and then I realized that I didn't have near enough pods, which is crazy cuz I had hundreds. They really go through them. I'm sure some of it is that the pods realized there was a predator in the tank and they weren't so blaze about hanging out on the glass or rocks out in the open. The nutramar ova was key. I had a brine shrimp hatchery in case that didn't work, but luckily it did.

But the amount the extra nutrients that I had to put into the tank to make sure that he was eating really did a number to my parameters and I had a pretty good algae bloom which I just in the past 2-3 weeks finally got under control. I just don't have time for it right now. If he hadn't jumped I felt like he was at a point that it was maintainable. He was gorgeous. I will definately get another one. But not with this tank. If I did I would definately have a pimp diner in place from the get go. I'd custom make it so that there is just a hole for him to go in/out of. The open jar would let alot of food escape when he moved around. I didn't have any other fish that would eat what he kicked up. I've seen diners with feeding tubes in the top so that you don't have to stick your hand in the tank 2x a day, you just dose the food right down the tube and into the diner.

Good luck!

 

[bsharpe]

I got my target Mandarin from Premier, she or he was sort of a shop pet and I had to agree to keep the name Cecil. So now she is pretty much the favorite fish, just beautiful. When I first got her, Kris said she ate frozen food, but the pod population in my 65 gallon was big and she ignored frozen after the first few days. Now that she has them (pods) under control she will eat mysis and Elite Reef cuisine- a mixture they make of tons of good stuff. She really likes the blood worms. I suggest that you keep offering a mixture of things for your fish to eat. BTW I got her to eat flat worms but she doe not touch them.

 

[ReefCheif]

Some reef keepers have had sucess with dragonettes in smaller tanks. I had one that did really well in 20 gal but i regularly seeded it with live pods. Something keeps currently eating them in my 90. Ive gone through 3 of them in the past 6 months. See them one day and there gone the next. Im starting to wonder if the large serpent star is the culpurate.

 

[yOdaddy]

So far it's been little bit over a month and my manderin is still fat. I haven't dose with pods or frozen foods. In case of an emergency I have pods ready in my 10 gal. But so far so good. Again I have no competitors for pods he is basically the only fish besides the yellow watchman and the pistol shrimp but they don't venture far

 

[AlgaeBarn]

I purposely added my serpent star to the sump/refugium. I was worried that with the mandarin sleeping on the gravel/substrate that he would be too tasty of a snack.

 

[ReefCheif]

Star in sump as of this morning. Time to go dragonette shopping.

 

[LittleCrabby101]

I really really want to eventually put a mandarin or target in my tank.......after reading all the posts I'm kinda scared too! They are so sensitive that I'm afraid even if he does get trained over to frozen he may stop eating and die. I have other copod munchers in my tank (40 gallon breeder) so I know that there are not nearly enough. They are probably one of my favorite fishes. Sounds like I might have better luck trying a target.

 

[yOdaddy]

Updated: the people that said there will still not be enough pods for my mandarin even with all the live rocks... You were right. So what I did was fed it some live brine and it went right for it just took a couple of minutes. Did that for a week then got frozen brine and mixed it with the live and it still went nuts for it. Now all it eat is frozen brine. I think they are very easy to train but I think it only works when it's a juvenile and not an adult since mine was a juvenile and very small when I first got it. But don't take my word for it

 

[2sweet]

Sounds to me like anything else you do in a saltwater tank, rewarding. I want one eventually when my tank is well established and I'm ready to train and Elite has them often so I'll find one when I'm ready for it but this thread certainly had a lot of great and useful information!

 

[ShelbyJK500]

I have heard Target mandys are the easiest to train. I can say mine just switched over to small pellet food by chance. I fed the pellets to my clowns and one day saw my mandy sucking them up off the sand bed. Something possibly worth trying as well.

 

[Ghosty]

If you're wary, there are some great YouTube vids on feeding methods. Here are a couple about setting up a "Mandarin Diner", lol:

https://www.google.com/search?q=you...-us&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&startIndex=&startPage=1

Here's Melev's very cool page on it, with pics:

http://www.melevsreef.com/mandarin_diner.html

 

[yOdaddy]

IMO the green manderins looks cooler and you won't regret it and it will be a +100 if you are able to keep one

 

[yOdaddy]

+100 cause they are very fun to watch

 

[Ghosty]

Just do your due dilligence and read, read, read. Over the years the success rate has gotten better, but not perfect, on figuring out how to keep them well fed, even in large tanks with a good fuge and large pod population.

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/search.php?searchid=9095223

This (15-page) "Mandarin Primer" thread is great in particular!: http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1492650&highlight=feeding+mandarin

Good luck.

 

[LittleCrabby101]

I will definately do my reading before I add one to my tank. If I can keep these shrimp babies alive maybe there is hope for a mandarin

 

[2sweet]

So I did buy a mandarin from Nick after reading this thread and more and more reading online. My tank was filled with pods
which were quickly and completely wiped out almost immediately by the mandarin that hunts non stop.
I actually began to order pods from reef2go, thanks Craiger. Great pods shipped quickly and always healthy. My mandarin loves
them but I was tired of ordering them all the time. I bought myself a yasha goby (paired with a pistol shrimp) and put it in the
same tank. I thought the two gobies might compete but quite the opposite happened. The mandarin watched the yasha goby eat
and began to eat frozen food! The mandarin would spit out most of the frozen food I was feeding from elite so I ordered some
ova (prawn eggs) and the mandarin gobbles it up. Thanks to the yasha I didn't have to pull the mandarin out to train it to eat,
it simply learned from the yasha goby and is still doing well.

 

[2sweet]

That's why I'm so thankful for this site and this group. You can learn about things before you attempt to put them into your tank so you don't
put something in you can't take care of and you can share your experiences with corals and fish to help others. This is what MASC is all about.