Eshopps Deskmate Mandarin Build

[duckman]

Just thought i would share my experiment with the spare deskmate i had lying around.

Originally i had plan to get some true nano fish for the build… but i was at my lfs and saw my favorite fish in the hobby - the green mandarin. Except this was a biota captive bred one and it was tiny (like 1cm tiny). When i saw it i figured i had to have it for my deskmate build.

Now, i know adult mandarins are not meant for a tank this small but this was a tiny tiny mandarin. I figure i could test the limit a bit and if i somehow was able to succeed at getting him into adulthood, i will move him to my 30g display

So because it was kind of an impulse buy, the setup was a bit hasty. It was really more of an insta tank. Salt water goes in, added fritz turbo start/live rocks/ceramic bioballs and off we go. To help combat the invariable ammonia/nitrate issue for such a small tank thats also bare bottom, i opted for a planted macroalgae tank. Luckily the insta cycle held (tank started 5/8, no crash of ammonia/nitrite/nitrate as of 6/29)

in terms of CUC, i picked up a sexy shrimp from the lfs because of its showy moves and i could actually find it in such a small tank. No snails. I figure if i run into undesirable algae and the uglies i will just deal with it. So far, just some small amount of hair algae. I did seed the tank with copepods (tisbe and tigepod) but i am not sure if the mandarin ate it all already. I am sure a tank this small is unable to sustain a stable pod population.

Since its a captive bred mandarin, i know i could get away with feeding other food. I had tried baby brine shrimp, frozen brine shrimp, tdo pellet (the very small one), reef nutrition pac pod and tigge feast. In the end, i think the pac pods are the best for me because it actually sinks so its convenient to use and most of it wont end up being wasted and collected in my filter floss. I still feed him tdo pellets when i have time but thats mainly to make sure once he gets bigger he will still eat pellets when i go on vacation.

I do culture tigge pods at home so i am not concerned about him starving. So far i hadnt had to supplement feed with live pods except when i went on vacation for a long weekend.

The mandarin have grown and is now about an inch.

Will plan on adding corals in the build. But for now its just a macroalgae and fish tank.

 

[blaxsun]

You should get some rocks in the tank to help with copepods (mandarins also love rocks and caves).

 

[duckman]

I have not decided on how to aquascape it yet. Right now all the macroalgae are glued to rock rubble and I am thicking about setting up some rocks in that all in one chamber in the back (or add a podhotel). My only concern about putting in too much rock work is that I may not be able to monitor the fish very well since there would be too many places to hide. Given how small the guy is, and need to monitor his growth, I probably will go with the pod hotel route with maybe a mini refugium in that all in one chamber in the back.

Just tested the parameters again as I will be adding corals next
Alk 8.0
CA 380
Mg 1200
Phos 0.18
Nitrate 0.3

 

[Allaric]

That is really cool, I am doing the exact same thing (just slower).

I have a pair of Biota green mandarins in a 40gal and have just setup a 12gal desktop to move them to. They don't use most of the tank, so they will end up having almost the same usable space and I actually get to see them a lot more.

Question on your foods, what exactly are you using? I used to have frozen pods and they ate it, but I can't find any sinking pods anymore. If you have some suggestions, I'd appreciate hearing them. I had to resort to daily bbs hatching which is a massive pain. It is fine as a snack, but very time consuming and restrictive to do daily.

The pair of mandarins decimated all the pods rather quick. I used to farm pods, but I didn't have a good method of harvesting pods after I grew them out. I picked up too much of the old food/slime from the grow tank since the filters were so fine.

 

[duckman]

Quick update to the tank:

3 months into setting up the tank and the Mandarin is growing well. Unfortunately i went thru the ugly stage the beginning of this month and when i went on vacation the hair algae pretty much smothered my macroalgae to death. Thankfully the mandarin is still alive. I have to remove the green hair algae manually and added an emerald crab with astrae and trochus snails to help with the clean up. I also found a court jester goby at the LFS. Supposedly they eat green hair algae so i QT’d and brought it into the tank. May have to remove it because they supposedly also eat pods so may compete with my mandarin for food.

Current stage of the tank :
Tank: Eshopps deskmate
Pump: sicce macra plus
Light: upgraded to ai prime.
Controller: reefpi (to dose liquid food)

Current Livestocks:

Fish: Captive bred Mandarin x1, court jester (rainford’s) goby x1

CUC: sexy shrimp x 2, astrea snail x4, trochus snails x 2, emerald crab x 1

Corals: aussie dendro (nps) and aussie fathead (nps), tsa battlestar galaxea coral, mushroom x 3 (unknown lineage, they were hitch hikers on the toadstool i got for the main display tank)

To answer the food questions that was asked, i was originally feeding tdo pellets but it doesnt really sink as well as i would like. I ended up going with reefnutrition pacpods. Its a dense liquid food and it sinks better. I drilled a hole in a beverage frige (u can see the yellow frige in the backround there above and behind the tank) and ran a dosing pump via reef pi to feed the tank twice a day. It also feeds the NPS in the tank. I did grow tigge pods until the culture crashed this month so i had dosed the live pods in there as well. That white structure in tank is a 3d printed pod hotel. I see my mandarin wait outside those holes sometimes and eat so i am sure there are some live pods in there as well.

I think the next phase for me is probably going to clean up the remaining hair algae. I am also doubting my choice of going bare bottom because there is a unsightly fish poop almost daily to every other day cleaning. I may just add sand for aesthetics alone. Also will be contemplating on building a mandarin feeder as well. This would be more to test out the feasibility of tdo pellet feeding.

This tank is more of an experimental tank to test the feasibility of raising a tiny captive bred mandarin in a fresh insta-start tank setup. Maybe one day i will make it prettier.

Will update once i clear the ugly stage.

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Quick update to the tank:

3 months into setting up the tank and the Mandarin is growing well. Unfortunately i went thru the ugly stage the beginning of this month and when i went on vacation the hair algae pretty much smothered my macroalgae to death. Thankfully the mandarin is still alive. I have to remove the green hair algae manually and added an emerald crab with astrae and trochus snails to help with the clean up. I also found a court jester goby at the LFS. Supposedly they eat green hair algae so i QT’d and brought it into the tank. May have to remove it because they supposedly also eat pods so may compete with my mandarin for food.

Current stage of the tank :
Tank: Eshopps deskmate
Pump: sicce macra plus
Light: upgraded to ai prime.
Controller: reefpi (to dose liquid food)

Current Livestocks:

Fish: Captive bred Mandarin x1, court jester (rainford’s) goby x1

CUC: sexy shrimp x 2, astrea snail x4, trochus snails x 2, emerald crab x 1

Corals: aussie dendro (nps) and aussie fathead (nps), tsa battlestar galaxea coral, mushroom x 3 (unknown lineage, they were hitch hikers on the toadstool i got for the main display tank)

To answer the food questions that was asked, i was originally feeding tdo pellets but it doesnt really sink as well as i would like. I ended up going with reefnutrition pacpods. Its a dense liquid food and it sinks better. I drilled a hole in a beverage frige (u can see the yellow frige in the backround there above and behind the tank) and ran a dosing pump via reef pi to feed the tank twice a day. It also feeds the NPS in the tank. I did grow tigge pods until the culture crashed this month so i had dosed the live pods in there as well. That white structure in tank is a 3d printed pod hotel. I see my mandarin wait outside those holes sometimes and eat so i am sure there are some live pods in there as well.

I think the next phase for me is probably going to clean up the remaining hair algae. I am also doubting my choice of going bare bottom because there is a unsightly fish poop almost daily to every other day cleaning. I may just add sand for aesthetics alone. Also will be contemplating on building a mandarin feeder as well. This would be more to test out the feasibility of tdo pellet feeding.

This tank is more of an experimental tank to test the feasibility of raising a tiny captive bred mandarin in a fresh insta-start tank setup. Maybe one day i will make it prettier.

Will update once i clear the ugly stage.

Good luck on getting past the ugly stage!

 

[duckman]

If I remember correctly from reading some of the posts by PaulB, mandarin prefers a slightly "dirtier" tank where there are more ugly growths so maybe it's not a bad thing to have an ugly stage.