Shall i wait ?

[squidward]

Good morning ! I was thinking of getting a green manderine dragonet i have heard of how difficult it is to keep. Does anyone have one that disagrees with the difficulty ?

 

[melosu58]

They are difficult. Most will eat pods only and that`s why you need a very mature tank with plenty of LR so as to house the pods. Now if you go to the LFS and they show you that he is eating prepared foods then you might be OK but I would make the LFS feed the tank and see for myself that he is eating. Dont take anyones word for it. Most starve to death because they will only eat live pods and their tank wont produce enough.

 

[squidward]

Im going to have to go around to a diffrent Lfs because the one i go to does not have manderine dragonets. Hopefully i can fine one that IS being feed by them .

 

[mr_X]

you are sentencing a mandarin to death putting it in your tank at this time. unless of course you actually witness it eating prepared foods, which is not common. you can't even supplement it's food effectively, because a single mandarin will eat a bottle of pods a day.

 

[squidward]

Yea the more i read about them the more i see what ppl mean about difficulty . And i wasnt looking to get one n e time soon !

 

[Flake]

You have to remember. All fish stores get their fish from somewhere. That somewhere is pretty much the ocean. Unless you can find ORA Mandarins, odds are, your mandarin was plucked from the sea where it grew up eating pods. Odds that it started eating mysis right away are slim. Unless its captive raised (and even then), I would be VERY wary. I have yet to see one eat mysis in my lfs.