Mandarins

[Fishfreak]

Hi,

I've always wanted a mandarin but could not provide its natural food. Well, I get the feeling the time for me to finally get one may be near ....

Here's its home's specs:

size - 80 l (oversized 2 footer)

current inhabitants - shrooms, polyps, one brain, one bubble, one CS, no fish, LR, LS

filtration - prizm skimmer only

established - since Nov 2001

water parameters - all OK except nitrates ~ 20ppm

There are dozens and dozens of pods on the sandbed, rocks and glass walls.

My question is how do I tell there will be enough pods to provide for one mandarin for its long term survival (not just a week or a month)?

Thanks

FF

[jazzben81]

get lots of plants...

i have 2 x 1 inch mandarin..

living happily for 2 days in my tank ...

very nice to watch ..

but seems like 1 of them like to bully the other...

u can try buying rotifers for them but gotta train them in a small box in the tank...

after tt create a feeding station...

for me.. i just got lotsa plants in my tank and i pray for the best...

[Achilles Tang]

I think rotifers are a little too small for Mandarins.

Anyway... Fishfreak... for a tank that has been established since Nov 01 till now with no livestock... your mandarins should be in high heaven!

[scooter blenny]

i had mine for almost 2 months now. Ever busy looking for food. As for pods, i dont remember seeing any in my tank. anyway, lots of strange creatures are coming out of the LR.

I feed it with frozen brine shrimp. Eats well. a gentle creature that are ever graceful. Love to watch the way it moves around........

[flubberina13]

My mandarin has been with me for more than half a year liao. I know it eats pods but my tank used to have an ozoniser servicing it till a month back so the pods population wouldn't be satisfactory. So dun know what it feeds on but it survives and is rather fat. see for yourself or wait till i can take a pic of it.

You can't introduce another mandarin of the same ###### as they are very aggressive to their same ######. Even if you wanna pair them, you must take pains to look for one of the opposite ###### and same size. And you can't mix both the splendidus and the psychedelic types together as they will definitely perform WWF whenever they meet. The male has a dorsal fin that has a longer tip on top.

Btw, try not to have any blennies with them as they fight for food with the mandarins too.

To add on, when you see them 'choomp choomp' here, 'choomp choomp' there, it's very cute...

[scooter blenny]

Err.....my mandarin seems to sleep with fire goby every night. wonder why?

[FuEl]

My pair of red scooter blennies somehow accept frozen brine and mysis shrimp.....but only when they land on the sand bed...

Are mandarins more fussy commpared to scooter blennies?

[Fishfreak]

GREAT NEWS

I'll just have one then - the smallest I can find. I used to have fish in this nanoreef but I moved them all to my FOWLR because I'm tired of always needing to hang around the tank to shoo the fish away whenever I feed the brain and bubble.

But how do I ensure there will always be sufficient pods in the tank? I don't want to feed BS as there's zero nutrition in them.

I remember back in SRC V1, I asked if if its possible to leave a small piece of shrimp in the tank as food for the pods. The reply I received was the shrimp will likely be food for the bristleworms instead. Does this still hold?

Jazzben81, I'm not sure how the plants fit in with food for mandarins. For me, I will not have plants .. if they die, they will mess up an 80 l tank big time!

Thanks

FF

[jazzben81]

LR and plants -> pods -> food for madarin?

tot tt how it goes?

[FuEl]

Feed alot..and naturally you will have lots of pods