Prepping for a mandarin

[Cbones1979]

Hello. I’ve had my reef up for almost a year. The mandarin was the one fish my daughter and I decided on working towards.
Any tips on where to get one (I’ve seen some captive bred ones have been trained to eat other food)?

starting to load up on pods just in case

any other tips?

 

[blaxsun]

Enough rock to sustain a copepod population. Find one that's fat and healthy.

 

[Cbones1979]

Enough rock to sustain a copepod population. Find one that's fat and healthy.

Thanks I think I have decent amount of rock and sand.

 

[Df1577]

Something else to consider is culturing pods in a bucket with phyto and throwing some in regularly. Some have also reported luck booming pod populations with phyto dosing.