This weekend, i purchased a spotted mandarin for my well established and mature 55 gallon tank (1 year and 3 months old system) with an in-tank fuge and 76 lb of live rock. I'm making this journal to record my experience with this fish and to share it with everyone else. Tomorrow I am going to buy a net breeder that I will hang in my tank and will begin to train the fish to eat frozen food. The lfs (this lfs actually knows what they're doing, i haven't seen one dead fish in their tanks) told me that it was eating frozen brine shrimp, but I will begin with feeding live brine, and then brine mixed with frozen mysis, and finally (hopefully) just frozen mysis. After achieving that, I will begin to train the mandarin to eat from a "diner" and once it get used to it, I will let it go back into the display tank. Eventually, I hope that it will eat pellets but frozen food is good as well.

I am open for any advice and I would like this thread to be helpful to other reefers interested in mandarins.
(please don't flame me for purchasing the fish. It was in a 10 gallon at the pet store and probably would have starved as there was minimal rock in the tank)

Here are some pics of the mandarin goby.As you can see, its not malnourished and looks healthy.

Thanks for doing this! Keep us updated!

Will stick along for the ride on this thread. Would love to have one but don't want to kill one in the process.

Mandarin FAQ

Enrich the frozen brine in garlic and selcon. I feed my mandarin a mixture of mysis, brine, and those two liquids. The selcon is vitamins, the garlic makes it taste good and smell better. Dunno if the garlic helps much, but it doesn't hurt.

Thanks guys

and thanks Dooderino for the FAQ
I have read it before and it has a bunch of interesting info about the fish

I bought the net today and some live brine shrimp
I put some in there but so far, the dragonet doesn't try to eat them, she just follows them sometimes.

I'll try to get some selcon to enrich the brine shrimp

Here's a pic of the fish in the net

When I got mine I just started with frozen brine and over about three days switched it out to straight Mysis. I did turn off the pumps and squirt it near where she was and she started eating right off the bat first day. I do soak my Mysis in Vitachem in hopes that it helps with some added nutrients. That was just over a year ago and she is nice and fat and happy

Nice!
I hope i have that kind of luck

Are blackworms any good to feed them?

I got mine to eat frozen brine soaked with garlic and live rotifers on day 2. The spotted mandarins are a little easier to get eating brine than the green mandarin.

Does yours puff up when it sees its reflection in the glass?

I saw it eat a couple of live brine today!
and yeah it does puff up sometimes

Great!.. here is what I have noticed with mine. He is not interested in brine or mysis unless they are moving. I feed mine thawed brine and mysis and I have to shoot them towards him and then he will eat one or two. If they stop moving he will show interest but not eat it.

Today was the first day I got mine eating frozen mysis. Happy to get him eating different foods.

I did put a live culture of copepods in my tank but I want to make sure he eats other foods in case they all get eaten.

Awesome. I hope to keep 1 or 2 of these in my next tank.

Yeah the last fish I will probably put in my tank is a Green Mandarin. That's only after I get him eating brine is quarantine tank.

They are just colorful it's hard to not want them. Just sucks that they are such picky eaters.

UPDATE!!!!

She's eating the brine shrimp!!
she actually chases them and eats them!
she ate a lot already

i'm uploading a video right now!

Glad to hear! I got one too about 3 weeks ago and was lucky to have it eating frozen without any training.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEbwrCVcS7A

My green mandarin eat live white worms. I will have to try live brine shrimps. I guess before one can even begin to make them eat something else, they would have to be out of copepods or have a low population of copepods in order be hungry enough to eat something different. When mine ate the white worms, he had just been 2 weeks without eating at the pet store and was starving. Now all he wants is to graze for copepods since there are plenty of them for the moment.

In the wild they eat copepods, worms, snails and fish eggs.

I tried one recently without any luck, it would actually flash its fins at the live brine like it was getting territorial and wouldn't even try eating them.

I actually don't think you need to be out of copepods. I just put a colony of copepods in my tank.. the next day he ate one or two brine shrimp. He never eats a ton of it as I think he prefers to find copepods but some will still eat brine or mysis. (maybe mine is lazy and is sick of searching for tiny copepods)

is that a spotted mandarin or a green mandarin? I think they behave differently with the green mandarin being much more picky eater. Probably the spotted mandarin will try other stuff but the green will probably have to be quite hungry to start on something else.

Mine eated white worms because he was starving at the LFS for 2 weeks. Now all he wants are the numerous copepods I have in my tank. After 3 days I don't see much decline in my pod population (tons on the glass) so that's a good sign. probably he won't have time to decimate them before my running cultures are ready.

Does anyone know the amount of copepods they eat in one day? just average? I think I read about one hundred but that seem a bit low?

Sorry, yes I was talking about the Spotted. The greens are much pickier.

I have had one for over two years now in my 55 no fuge just a basic sump/skimmer for filtration. My tank was pretty established already but with no fuge I thought my pod and mysis population could diminish, which is not the case. My tank is filled with breeder pods and mysis and my spotted Mandrin looks like she's got a marble in her stomach she's so fat. It looks as though her mouth is too small to consume larger pods. As far as prepared foods go I am willing to bet that it would not take any training at all to get it to eat spirulina brine. Never trained mine and never saw it eat prepared foods until I started feeding spirulina brine, she has gone crazy for it from day one.

they will probably eat hundreds of copepods in a day
try some bloodworms with ur mandarin
they usually eat those no problem for some reason
you should probably enrich those though because they aren't that healthy for saltwater fish

yeah they do like live blood worms, any live worms really. nice fish

Mine was afraid of live blood worms also.

Another UPDATE!

she just ate some frozen mysis
it was her first time eating them so she was eating slowly
I'm sure she'll eat faster once she gets the taste for them
Maybe I should get her some spirulina brine shrimp, since they're smaller than mysis
which are more nutritious?

She is now eating frozen mysis happily and has a little bulging belly

I let her back into the tank today

She is eating mysis and spirulina brine shrimp
I'm going to start to train her to eat from a "diner"

Frozen bloodworms in a feeding station work great.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTYr_-mL7jU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRYnKQendzY

nice vids

I think mysis and spirulina brine are healthier though cuz they are meant to be fed to saltwater fish
I'm going to use one of those starbucks coffee glass bottles for the diner

I would feed a mix of hikari mysis, hikari bloodworms. Soaked in garlic, vit c, brightwells amino omega and switched off with Max amino. I collected spawns just about everynight up until I forgot the pumps off aftwerward one night and woke up to all my fish dead. Lots more vids of the Mandarins, babys and ect on my youtube.

I just fed her frozen in the tank for the first time!

That's a beautiful fish. Glad it's doing well.

Thanks!
once it gets used to eating from the bottle, i'll try putting some pellets in as well

Thanks for sharing your experience, it really picks up where the "faq" left off, which is the most important part imho. What's the bottle all about? Did your fish go in there on its own?

Following

Thanks

The bottle idea is from melevsreef.com
It keeps all the food in one place and away from other fish
and its less time-consuming than target-feeding
I gently coaxed the mandarin into the bottle and once it saw the food, it started to eat

She will begin to associate the bottle with food once she gets used to it

Great job every post help's prevent starvation of these awesome fish

thanks

Mine now eats Hikary frozen bloodworms, frozen cyclopeeze and fish roe (orange eggs on sushi).

It was the orange fish roe that started it eating on frozen food as they do eat fish eggs in the wild. After that I mixed bloodworms and cylopeeze with it and he's eating everything a few times per day. Can't beleive the huge appetited they have.

Those who have problem feeding mandarin should try fish roe since it is part of their natural diet and most relish it. Mine is a green mandarin male.

Part of the reason I started on the bloodworms is because I was watching a video of them spawning and everywhere I looked there where little thin worms. Seems to be why bloodworms trigger such a good feeding response. Mine never took to the roe for some reason. Nutramar ova might work ok too. My pipes liked it. Really small though.

where did you see this video? was it on the web? if so I would like to see it if you have the link?

Mine really go crazy for hikari frozen bloodworms. good thing they are enriched!

I don't understand though...I still have tons of copepods on my front glass and he does not care much for them. He knows they are there because from time to time he does come to eat a few, but he could have a major buffet there if he wanted. Just wierd when I put the bloodworms he does not leave the spot until they are all gone.