Tips for feeding mandarin dragonet?

[mr_X]

That's gotta be a humungous mandarin. I'll rephrase my comment to "it's extremely rare for a mandarin to eat amphipods. Probably as rare as it is for it to eat prepared foods".

[Sergie]

Haha no he's not all that huge, just has a huge appetite. He might be all of two inches long.

[Mpfaff77]

Well I would say they may not eat full grown Amphipods. But they vary in size as they grow. The pods from reefs2go have Copepods too. So in my pod tank I'm sure I have multiple species. Most of them small enough for mandarin to eat.

[mr_X]

Mandarins are hard to keep in small tanks, period. A single specimen will eat the tank clean of pods in a very short time. They will not reproduce fast enough to sustain it IME.

[mwilliams]

I have been wanting a Mandy for a very long time but after reading the article in Coral Magaizine I am not so sure anymore.

They said that their skin has toxins in it and when they have died and other fish being around them have also died.
Has anyone ever experienced this or not?

[mwilliams]

PS: It is nice to see you posting again Doug. I haven't see you post in awhile. Or could be because I have not been on in awhile either.

[mr_X]

I've been here when I can. When was the last time you were on?
No, I never saw that toxic issue you mentioned, but i did have one a while back that had some kind of parasite growing inside it. At the end it was a long fleshy thing sticking out the side of it. The morning i found it dead, it was totally engulfed in some weird slime. Maybe that's the stuff.

[mwilliams]

That article was in the Nov/Dec issue page 47 "Coral Magaizine" man that article is very good and long with different issues being addressed for the Manadarin/Dragonets.

[biggesteaglefan]

Yes MPFAFF77 i would like to learn how to breed pods???

[Mpfaff77]

Originally Posted by Mpfaff77

I ordered a amphipod breeding kit from indo pacific sea farms. Can post links later. I also ordered bag of pods from reefs2go.com. Just so I had good variety of pods to seed my tank. I put good amount of rock rubble in tank with a small hang on back filter with small heater and bag of carbon in hob filter. The amphipod breeding kit has some algea mats it comes with along with pod flakes. I dumped pods in and feed flakes once every other day or so. I will also squirt some frozen food in there too when I do tank feeding. I do weekly water changes and when I shine flashlight at night just little pods everywhere.

I posted this about pod tank.

[Mpfaff77]

Right now reefs2go.com has 2000 pods for 33.99

[mr_X]

I wonder how they count them....lol

[Ibrahim]

Originally Posted by mr_X

I wonder how they count them....lol

What would be funny is if a customer actually counted them and only got 1800 so he wanted a refund lool

[Mpfaff77]

Yeah it says Impossible to count. But each time I ordered I have been very happy with what I got.

[JordanJ]

Www.livecopepods.com just a suggestion though, if you buy bottled pods, open the bottle and put the opening on top of the rock so they can swim into the rock work without the other fish eating them first! Otherwise, all the other fish will gobble them up before your mandarin has any chance of getting fed.

[mwilliams]

Originally Posted by Mpfaff77

Yeah it says Impossible to count. But each time I ordered I have been very happy with what I got.

How many times have you ordered from reefs2go?

[Crazycajun]

I have order pods three times from reefs2go. They have been great. Also ordered mushrooms. It was shipped fast and boxed greatly. Will order from them a lot more. Hard to beat them in service and delivery of pods.

[mwilliams]

Cool thanks I will have to check them out.