I'd call a 55 the BARE minimum for a Mandarin, and only if you have a lot of LR and a refugium. The goal should be to get the mandarin on frozen foods ASAP, but if it doesn't work, you really don't want to have to buy more pods every week.
Consider this. In the wild, Mandarin Dragonets have been observed eating a copepod every 3-5 seconds. Let's go with 5. So that means 7 pods per minute.
That's 420 copepods per hour. Assuming a 10 hour photoperiod (they do sleep at night, and even change color to do so), that's 4,200 pods every day.
29,400 pods in a week. Now, an 8 oz bottle of Algagen Reefpods Tisbe costs about $15, and is guaranteed to have 100-200 pods.
Do you see what I'm getting at here?
If the Mandarin is not able to eat at about that rate, it will very slowly starve to death, and without a refugium (and I don't mean an HOB), you're unlikely to keep up that kind of population in a 55.
Will he eat every last pod and then just die in a few days? Nope. He'll eat every one he can get to at 7/minute. Then it'll be 5/minute... 3/minute... 2/minute... and he'll be wasting away as fewer and fewer pods are in places he can reach them.
Not trying to be doom and gloom here. I'm getting a Mandarin hopefully tomorrow. but I have a very well established refugium teeming with pods, as well as 60+ lbs of LR in my 55.
They're gorgeous fish, and I want you to have one, but I don't want you to watch is die slowly. So my advice is get your refugium set up, as large as you can go, and stock it with pods. Reefs2go has an Amphipod/copepod blend at an unbeatable price. I'd get 1000 (buy 1, get 1 free!) and use that to start your fuge going. THEN wait a few months. Just my 2 cents. I want you to succeed!! LOL
