mandarin eating!

[barracuda]

A friend of mine brought me a mandarin(synchiropus splendidus) for my birthday-not a fish that I would have bought myself-and since I don't put anything directly into my main I put it into my QT that has no live rock 3 weeks ago. Now I know everyone says you need to have a ton of LR to keep them but this one is eating my homemade food even taking it out of mid-water, is this something anyone else has seen or is this just a starving fish trying to get some food?

 

[austinsdad]

Haven't seen it, but heard others tht have had luck with prepared foods. Lots of folks don't QT mandarins for feeding problems... and that they are less prone to ick I think I've read.

Congrats! You've got the best of it. A QT precaution and a mandarin eating prepared foods.

 

[SkinnyPete]

barracuda, I'm in the midst of mandarin research. Do some reading online. You should have a very mature tank as they primarily feed off pods which live on your rock. I've got 160lbs of rock and I just got a fuge and mandarin owners are still recommending that I wait 8-9 more months at the least before buying a one.

According to my lfs, he "runs into 1 out of 10 mandarins that will accept dead food", so you lucked out big time. Congrats!

I just posted this (sorry for the repeated info) http://ozreef.org/content/view/89/2/ <-- cool facts about mandarin survival in home aquaria.

Good luck. Keep me posted on his progress if you think of it.

- Skins

 

[adacaro]

They do eat on pods found out the bad way ,lost mine because my tank was only 3 months now after a year i have one doing fine

 

[Mbeef61]

you are just lucky like me...i have one in a 29 gallon fuge with a bangaii cardinal..they both devour brine shrimp...they will eat prepared foods i think alot more people give them credit for...however i do think its less nessicary to quarantine him...they have a weird slime defense that keeps the ich at bay...so get him to the main tank and get him fat