If and when you decide to get a mandarin i would suggest strongly paying the extra money for an ORA one. The are supposed to eat pellets, mine didnt of course but I think that the fact that it was raised on pellets helped me to train mine to eat them again. I've had mine for a few years and it took over a month to get him eating frozen foods, luckily I had enough pods in my biocube to keep him fed until he came around. he would have starved no doubt in my mind. Mine is now pretty fat and started eating pellets about a year ago which makes feeding alot easier.