Manderain

[Mckitrick]

Ok one of the fish I wanted was a manderian goby and I read that hey eat Copepods and was wondering how I am able to keep those in my tank since I have heard of cases were they eat them all and starve????

 

[obscurereef]

hard to keep one even w/ adding copepods very often which is crazy expensive! They could run out of copepods, their main/preferred food supply. It's best to find one that is already trained to eat frozen foods or you could take a chance, buy one and have a continuous supply of copepods and slowly introduce frozen foods in their diet. However, this takes a lot of patience/work/time.

 

[Nu-Nu the eel]

The short answer is dont do it unless you are either willing to spend hundreds of dollars on its food and even then it might die, or you have a 100+ gallon tank full with pods with a fuge and sump as well.

 

[bettaowner]

Mandarins are beautiful fish but they require a constant supply of coperpods.

 

[jetajockey]

I'm planning to get one of these as well if we find some h. erectus to go with it.

Get one that's trained on frozen already, if you can get them to feed it in front of you at the lfs.

 

[Mckitrick]

Ok that would be good to get a already trained one

 

[Crystal A]

How big is your tank? And how old?

 

[Mckitrick]

Well I'm not getting one for a while but the size is about 5 and age is almost a week got a fish a Monday

 

[Nu-Nu the eel]

Mandarins need way bigger tanks then just 5 gallons.... What fish dis you get? Almost every fish meeds a bigger tank size then that, there are a few exceptions though

 

[Mckitrick]

I have a juvenile ocelleris clown and I have a bigger tank it is just not set up yet

 

[Elude82]

I would not recommend one. They are just about one of the most beautiful fish, but very difficult to keep up with. Expensive to maintain. In the wild they eat a copepod every 3-4 seconds. And they are constantly active. You would have to have a refugium, and breed copepods in order to make it a logical fish selection. If I were you, get a nice picture of a mandarin, hang it on your wall, and just admire it from there! Lol

 

[Sniperhank]

I have had my green mandarin for 2 months now. Everytime reefs2go has a BOGO offer for 1k pods I get it. Constantly restocking my pod supply, but my mandarin is doing great. I'm running a 55 reef, but my mandarin is on the smaller side which has probably aided me in keeping it fed/alive.

 

[Mrc8858]

I agree stay clear of the mandarin for a while mine was good for 8 months.. then I moved, pod population crashed, and he starved to death.. they can be trained but you shouldnt rely on that as mine was but with a healthy population of pods he stopped excepting frozen and never went back.