Mandarin Goby Pros and Cons. eating?

[pokegirl1332]

so currently have a 130 gallon water box an 30 gallon water box with my husband. in the 30 we keep our frags and pair of clowns, and in the 130 we have a purple tang, 2 davinci clowns, a melanarus wrasse (pardon my spelling), a coral beauty angel, and a flame angel. would like to get a goby and mandarin gobies are super awesome but I know the troubles with them eating. I've been reefing for 5 years but wanted to know how people get mandarins to eat cuz my main concern with getting one is it starving itself and would the other inhabitants pick on it. I just would really like one but only if it's good for the fish. opinions?

 

[gabeb]

The best way to do this is to have a refugium. If you have a refugium it can act as a small ecosystem for the pods to thrive and survive, and some will escape and pulled up to the display with the return pump and the mandarin will then be able to eat them. So create a refugium and seed it with a bottle of pods and let them reproduce and once you have a lot your mandarin should be good to go. The other way to go would be to just feed pods, however that is much more expensive as you would need to keep buying bottles. Some people are also able to lean them onto frozen foods, but I have heard that they do not last long and that its bad for them because they do not get their needed nutrients, however I am not confident on that.

 

[Billldg]

You can seed your tank with copepods, they are already in their, you can just add more. I have heard a lot of people putting algae in their sump and then putting copepods in their tank and the algae in the sump gives them an extra place to multiply

 

[ca1ore]

I'd personally not recommend a mandarin. Just too hard to keep them alive long term. Unless you're prepared to be constantly replenishing copepods or raising baby brine I'd look elsewhere.

 

[Sorcha2]

So I have a year old 65g tank. It does not produce enough pods for a Mandarin. I do have one though. I've tried the brine shrimp hatching method with a previous one and it didn't work out. This one is doing quite well even growing some on broadcast feeding Nutramar ova. The issue though that I have found is that it is very hard to keep your tank clean with the amount of nutrients you have to put in to keep them healthy. The amount of Bioload is not proportionate to the size of the fish. I think they work out best with tanks that are already set up to feed heavily. I suggest doing a lot of research into them before you get one and have a detailed plan for feeding and getting rid of nutrients. They take a lot of work to keep but are gorgeous .

 

[jtl]

I have a mandarin and lots of pods. I had to re-home a wrasse that was competing for pods and now there is no competition. I keep some ruble live rock and chaeto in my refugium and that is full of pods as well.

 

[saltyhog]

It might be doable but not as long as the melanurus is in the tank. He will out compete the mandarin and keep pod numbers low.

 

[Devaji]

look in to PaulB feeder. you hatch BBS and feed that way. he has been keeping pipes and mandrans in his tank for years...

to be clear its a DIY feeder not a store bought one...

 

[foxt]

I have had two mandarins for over a year in a 220g tank with lots of wrasses. I have a 180g sump with a very large fuge section, which grows lots of pods of many varieties. I have about 2000gph flowing through the sump, and don't really have any idea how many pods find their way into the DT. The mandarins have learned to eat other stuff (live blackworms, LRS), and that combined with whatever pod population moves from the sump to the DT has kept them fat. I do see them pecking at the rocks, more so in the morning. I feed three times a day. I have quite a bit of rockwork with lots of small spaces, and I think that has also helped the pod population hunker down in the DT as the fish hunt for them.

I also tried a version of PaulB's feeder, but after a while I found that whatever else I was doing seemed to be sustaining the mandarins. For the feeder, I found that using decapsulated brine eggs placed directly into the little feeder container worked well, and I could skip the step of hatching the brine and transferring them to the feeder.

So, although one year is not considered long term with these fish, it has worked out for me so far.

 

[Devaji]

I have had two mandarins for over a year in a 220g tank with lots of wrasses. I have a 180g sump with a very large fuge section, which grows lots of pods of many varieties. I have about 2000gph flowing through the sump, and don't really have any idea how many pods find their way into the DT. The mandarins have learned to eat other stuff (live blackworms, LRS), and that combined with whatever pod population moves from the sump to the DT has kept them fat. I do see them pecking at the rocks, more so in the morning. I feed three times a day. I have quite a bit of rockwork with lots of small spaces, and I think that has also helped the pod population hunker down in the DT as the fish hunt for them.

I also tried a version of PaulB's feeder, but after a while I found that whatever else I was doing seemed to be sustaining the mandarins. For the feeder, I found that using decapsulated brine eggs placed directly into the little feeder container worked well, and I could skip the step of hatching the brine and transferring them to the feeder.

So, although one year is not considered long term with these fish, it has worked out for me so far.

Very nice! I love mandarins...prob. my all time fav. fish.

Ok you you are just adding decapulasid bbs in to the feeder and not hatching them? So they hatch in the feeder? Do you clean the feeder? How often.

 

[foxt]

Yes, put the decapsulated eggs directly in the feeder. I clean it out each time I reload it with new eggs, which works out to be about every two or three days (when I was paying attention). I stopped using the feeder though, since it seemed like the mandarins had to be living off of other stuff in the tank, given the size of my tank and the fuge that feeds it.

 

[BC1906]

This is what I did and mine is fat and happy. Before getting him I seeded my tank and refugium (chaeto, liverock, sand) with a bunch of pods (at least 10 bottles). After a couple of months I purchased my mandarin. Every time I would feed my other fish I would squirt some frozen mysis and brine where my mandarin was. After a little while he started to eat frozen and now loves it. I think the biggest thing is finding a healthy mandarin from the LFS. A lot of times when you get them they are already really skinny and by that point it's hard to keep them

 

[jtl]

Mandarins may eat brine shrimp and mysis but they cannot survive on that because it is not there normal diet. If you have to put 10 bottles of pods in your tank to seed it something is wrong. One bottle is plenty, in fact some people never add pods and the are prolific.

 

[BC1906]

Mandarins may eat brine shrimp and mysis but they cannot survive on that because it is not there normal diet. If you have to put 10 bottles of pods in your tank to seed it something is wrong. One bottle is plenty, in fact some people never add pods and the are prolific.

I never said I HAD to put 10 bottles in but unlike many people who gets these I wanted to make sure he had plenty of food. I think you missed the point of my comment. I started out with a large population of pods (and still have it) and I was able to find a healthy mandarin to start with. Can a mandarin live off just frozen? I do not know the answer to that. Is supplementing his feeding with mysis/brine going to hurt anything? No.