Mandarin in a nano tank?

[poidog]

I dont' know if this has been mentioned yet... i'm not reading all three pages. But what about getting an ORA mandarin? They are breed in captivity and feed a mix of prepared foods. They are supposed to be good at accepting prepared food, and better for survival if that is the plan. MCF has a nice big, fat spotted one that I saw there this weekend.

 

[trackfast]

maybe think about a scooter blenny.... i have one in my 30 gal with 10 gal refugium and he mostly eats the pods but loves myisis shrimp

Thanks for the suggestion but I posted looking for success stories just with Mandarins. I was curious if there were resourceful or imaginative ways to do it. I know the "right" way; mature tank, 75+lbs live rock, etc. I wanted to see if anyone had thought of a way that no one else did.

 

[SaylorsReef]

I dont' know if this has been mentioned yet... i'm not reading all three pages. But what about getting an ORA mandarin? They are breed in captivity and feed a mix of prepared foods. They are supposed to be good at accepting prepared food, and better for survival if that is the plan. MCF has a nice big, fat spotted one that I saw there this weekend.

Its been mentioned.

 

[ColaAddict]

Will Mandarins eat amphipods too, or just copepods? I can see at night that my tank has plenty of larger pods, but it's very hard to see how good my copepod population is.

 

[Pufferpunk]

Only the little ones in their tiny mouths.

 

[trackfast]

The LFS gets Mandarins in every so often. The young woman who works with the livestock was told by the supplier that their Mandarins will eat frozen foods but she 's never seen that. The fish usually get purchased quickly so she doesn't know if the Mandarins survive or not.

 

[Piscinarii]

I kept a green mandarin in a 29g Biocube for 2 years. She ate frozen mysis shrimp almost right away. I did toss a bottle of pods into the tank every once in awhile as a treat but until I upgraded to include a sump those pods were gone pretty quickly.

I made a really newbie mistake though when I upgraded and added a male mandarin. He beat her up so fast I was heartbroken. She was so much smaller I was surprised he did it. Just an FYI.

 

[ColaAddict]

I'm trying to seed my tank with copepods, the thing is I have a ton of apmphipods (gammarus shrimps). Will the amphipods eat up all the copepods before they have a chance to seed the tank?