Mandarin Goby as part of clean up crew?

[Marie7]

IMO, If you feed your tank where there are a lot of food for the Mandarin to eat off the bottom, then you are feeding too much food. I feed my tank a lot of food, but not much of my food make it to the bottom.
My fish are very fat and my Mandarin pair are very fat, but not off of frozen or pellets off of the bottom

This is one of a fish i love and enjoy looking at their color i love those blues, i had few before but end up dead after a while i guess from starvation, they need a good supplement to thrive with out a good pod supply... Absolutely gorgeous

 

[dennis romano]

I have a green spotted mandarin that is a very aggressive eater. He swims to where I pour in defrosted brine shrimp and mysis and takes food from the water column.

 

[afboundguy]

Interesting... I would love to try a mandarin in my tank, but I'm afraid my pods aren't enough. Wish I could find one who was for sure eating prepped foods.

Dan I have a captive bred one on my 25'ish cube that has a 3'ish gallon HOB refugium. I got her when she was under an inch over the summer from a LFS. She was eating frozen food and TDO pellets and had been at the LFS for a few months (they were in the process of moving shops so foot traffic was down plus that silly little corona thing). She has grown more than triple her original size.

so those of you with aqua-cultured mandarins put them right into the DT and have no issue feeding? My family wants a mandarin. I have a 110 with a lot of rockwork. It's about a year old and I think I have plenty of pods - I see them crawling around on the glass at night. But I am not sure if I would quarantine for the usual concerns - since a bare-ish tank wouldn't have pods, or if it is smart to go into the display even if it is disease-free - since there's no way I could target feed it if I had to. Both plans have issues.
These tales of biota mandarins swimming up to eat food make it seem like it won't be an issue either way.

I personally wouldn't QT a mandarin but that's just me. They can't get ick and for the reason you mentioned QT tanks are bare and they could starve. I would think your 110 would be a piece of cake. Like I mentioned above I have one in my 25'ish + 3'ish HOB refugium and she's growing like a rocket ship.

Full disclosure DO NOT TRY A MANDARIN IN A SMALL TANK!!!!

I have been reefing for close to 25 years as this point and I go super above and beyond to make sure the mandarin stays fat and healthy. I feed my tank extremely heavily (7 fish) and I spent months and months preparing a phyto culture and then a pod culture which I then let get a foothold in my refugium and my DIY pod hotel plus I culture white worms and hatch baby brine shrimp daily that I feed the tank 1-2 times daily via the @Paul B spot feeder method in order to ensure success of my mandarin in such a small tank.

Due to feeding so heavily I can agree with the OP that she helps with the small amounts of food that does make it to the bottom. I do purposely over-feed the crap out of the tank when I feed white worms and shut off the PH's within a few seconds so a bunch falls in the back of the tank and she loves the white worms and gets to feast before the PITA clowns realize there's none left in the water column and look for her and start stealing the rest off the sandbed!

 

[Fish man]

I've owned 2 over the years. My current one is 4 years old. I converted them first to frozen brine shrimp by target feeding. This one will eat pellets or frozen brine. My first one did well in a 55g on pods without adding anything . After I got a Copperband I noticed him losing weight so I started target feeding him the frozen brine and eventually he started eating pellets. I haven't found them that hard to convert. If they don't start taking prepared offerings and their not losing weight they're probably doing fine on your pod population

 

[code4]

I have several Mandarins. And they all eat almost anything. Pods are great to keep them healthy until they start eating other things. And unless the faster eaters come and snatch the food away from them will eat out of the water column. I spot feed mine also. They come running when I turn off the pumps in anticipation of food. If given pods, time and somewhere they can acclimate to an aquarium where they are allowed to eat without fast moving fish they do well.

 

[drblakjak55]

IMO, If you feed your tank where there are a lot of food for the Mandarin to eat off the bottom, then you are feeding too much food. I feed my tank a lot of food, but not much of my food make it to the bottom.
My fish are very fat and my Mandarin pair are very fat, but not off of frozen or pellets off of the bottom

One fat mandarin.

 

[Marie7]

I w

One fat mandarin.

I would love to learn how to care for them without pods. I love the blue ones a lot, green are cute too

 

[lovely_trequartista]

How do you know when you have enough pods to sustain a mandarin. You cant see them so is there another way?

I've surveyed how many pods mine picks from a rock in a minute. I've read they typically eat 500 to 1,500 pods per week. Not a great method but aside from observations of body mass and shape to draw conclusions about feeding, not sure what else we can do.

 

[EMeyer]

Its puzzling hearing about difficulties with these fish. I wonder, those of you who are seeing mandarins slowly starve to death, were your tanks started with dry rock by any chance?

 

[afboundguy]

Its puzzling hearing about difficulties with these fish. I wonder, those of you who are seeing mandarins slowly starve to death, were your tanks started with dry rock by any chance?

I don't think they are difficult to keep if you have the correct set up and are willing to do the leg work to make sure they have the correct set up. A mandarin can simply not live no live food alone. Their digestive track/stomach is thin and narrow so they need certain types of food and due to the physiology of their digestive track/stomach they have to constantly eat in order to survive which is why they can not survive and thrive on 1-2 daily feedings of frozen food IMO. It definitely helps if they're eating frozen or prepared foods but if you don't have pods they will definitely slowly starve to death.

I don't think it would matter if you started your tank with dry or live rocks what matters most is that it is an established tank. If you seed a dry rock started tank with pods (or even allow pods that would probably come from other frags) and have the correct setup eventually the pods will multiply enough to give them a constant supply of pods to keep them fat and healthy. I don't think you could prevent having a pod population starting in any tank even if you really tried lol