green mandarin dragonet question

[Red44]

Hi I always wanted a green mandarin and was wondering it says that you need well established aquarium how long should I wait to get one ? My tank is around 5 months

 

[Mpfaff77]

How big is tank and how many lbs of live rock? 5 months is pretty established but depends on your pod population and do you have a refugium. I see some posts saying at least a year tho. I have a mandarin in my 90 gallon with 55 sump and have about 15 gallon refugium in sump. Over 100 lbs of rock and ton of pods. Plus I have been breeding pods to add to refuge and tank. My mandarin also eats frozen blood worms and mysis. If you can find a mandarin that eats frozen it is a good head start. Although they will still constantly hunt all day for pods.

 

[Red44]

How big is tank and how many lbs of live rock? 5 months is pretty established but depends on your pod population and do you have a refugium. I see some posts saying at least a year tho. I have a mandarin in my 90 gallon with 55 sump and have about 15 gallon refugium in sump. Over 100 lbs of rock and ton of pods. Plus I have been breeding pods to add to refuge and tank. My mandarin also eats frozen blood worms and mysis. If you can find a mandarin that eats frozen it is a good head start. Although they will still constantly hunt all day for pods.

My tank is a 72 gallon I have around 75-80 ibs live rock I have a 4 gallon hob sump with lots of pods growing in there

 

[Mpfaff77]

Sounds like you got the right setup for mandarin. Try to make sure you get one that eats at the store and I'd nice and fat. I have read a lot on these forums that mandarins are not suited for aquariums. But I have seen success with them. I have had mine for 8 months and he is fat and healthy. I did loose mandarin 2 years ago that never started to eat frozen.

What other fish in tank?

 

[carey]

In my opinion 5 months isnt "established" enough for a pod eating mandarin. It might be good enough while you get a mandarin eating frozen food but in the long term I don't think that it will be enough.

It took a month and over a month to get each of my dragonets eating frozen food. I also bought an ORA blue mandarin so it would be easier to get her onto prepared foods. The mandarin pretty much wiped out an entire population of pods while she was being weaned onto prepared.

 

[Red44]

Sounds like you got the right setup for mandarin. Try to make sure you get one that eats at the store and I'd nice and fat. I have read a lot on these forums that mandarins are not suited for aquariums. But I have seen success with them. I have had mine for 8 months and he is fat and healthy. I did loose mandarin 2 years ago that never started to eat frozen.

What other fish in tank?

Ok thxs I'll try to find one that eats at the store my other fish are
1 false clownfish
Royal gramma and a foxface

 

[Red44]

In my opinion 5 months isnt "established" enough for a pod eating mandarin. It might be good enough while you get a mandarin eating frozen food but in the long term I don't think that it will be enough.

It took a month and over a month to get each of my dragonets eating frozen food. I also bought an ORA blue mandarin so it would be easier to get her onto prepared foods. The mandarin pretty much wiped out an entire population of pods while she was being weaned onto prepared.

so how long should I wait ? Or should I buy more pods and put them in the fuge ?

 

[carey]

Pods pretty much grow and adjust based on the tank, while i don't think adding more would be a bad thing, not too sure on how much it would help. I had about 6month old live rock that was literally teeming with pods that i used to start my biocube which is where my dragonets are. So i had a really good base of them, also have a refugium on the back of the cube and then i waited 6 months to be sure that a somewhat decent colony of pods existed.

i always knew i would get an ORA one, I figured it would be great if they ate prepared right from the git go, but I also figured it would help get her weened onto frozen. I never had any intention of letting her eat only pods.

Do you want her to eat just pods or do you want to try to get her to eat frozen/prepared foods?

 

[Mpfaff77]

Ok thxs I'll try to find one that eats at the store my other fish are
1 false clownfish
Royal gramma and a foxface

I'm not sure about the fox face. No experience with them. But clown and gramma will be no problem with mandarin

 

[Red44]

Pods pretty much grow and adjust based on the tank, while i don't think adding more would be a bad thing, not too sure on how much it would help. I had about 6month old live rock that was literally teeming with pods that i used to start my biocube which is where my dragonets are. So i had a really good base of them, also have a refugium on the back of the cube and then i waited 6 months to be sure that a somewhat decent colony of pods existed.

i always knew i would get an ORA one, I figured it would be great if they ate prepared right from the git go, but I also figured it would help get her weened onto frozen. I never had any intention of letting her eat only pods.

Do you want her to eat just pods or do you want to try to get her to eat frozen/prepared foods?

I would want the dragonet to eat pods and frozen/prepared foods if I could get it to

 

[Red44]

I'm not sure about the fox face. No experience with them. But clown and gramma will be no problem with mandarin

Ok my foxface has been really peaceful with all my fish it's gramma I was more concern about