I have a 20h nano reef which has been setup for 3 months. I currently have an ocellaris clownfish pair and a single yellow clown goby. It is skimmerless with a good amount of live rock and I perform a weekly 25% water change. My lfs, which has been very good to me, has received a shipment of green mandarins, a few of which they have managed to persuade to eat frozen enriched brine shrimp. My question is would I be pushing the stocking on my tank if I added a single green mandarin? Thanks in advance.

did you see it eat frozen

Yes, they were nice enough to feed it right in front of me. So I rushed home to check if it would be ok

Mandarinfish are stunning! But beware. Historically, they usually don't fare well unless provided with copious amounts of their normal prey item (being live copepods). This requires a very large tank to grow a colony of pods capable of feeding a single mandarinfish.

I have heard of them being trained to eat frozen prepared foods, but again, exercise caution. It can be very hard to train them. You also likely will need to be diligent about feeding several times a day. Also know that brine shrimp aren't the most nutrition-packed critters out there either. Make sure they're enriched, and know it's probably like subsisting on fast food. They'll do good for a time but likely won't survive as long or healthily on a proper, balanced diet.

Don't mean to be a bummer, I really get the allure of the Mandarinfish. I had one years ago that I ended up having to rehome due to my inability to adequately provide for it. Just want you to be prepared and make an INFORMED decision.

Thankyou guys very much for your replies. I have done quite a large amount of reading on the species itself. Mainly from the a group of breeders who have not only weened the fish onto frozen food but have managed to bring them into breeding condition, spawn them and them raise the fry to adulthood. I feel I am at least adequately informed enough to give it a try however I am obviously still no expert. My question more concerned the much more noobie topic of whether my tank could handle the bioload of an additional fish? Thanks again

I have one for about 10 days and when it was at the LFS it did not eat for 2 weeks. When it got into my tank it hunted down my huge population of copepods. I still see the copepods on the glass but much less so you have to have so many copepods that you actualy see them on the glass. I have a 20 gallons tank with 20 lbs of very porous totoka live rock and lots of copepods, isopods and amphypods.

They have HUGE appetite so keeping them on copepods only is keeping them on the edge of starvation in any size of tank (they have to eat constantly). I feed mine fish roe, Hikary frozen bloodworms and frozen cyclopeeze and he eats everything like there is no tomorrow. No training was required with mine.

He eats all this until the belly is bulging and then he keep looking for more and for copepods like he did not eat anything.

I think your other fish are going to be a problem with the mandarin not getting enough food. Or you will have to feed so much food that there is enough for the mandarin as they eat quite slowly. When I put the bloodworm and fish roe, he takes about 20 to 30 minutes to gobble everything up.

How are you going to prevent your other fish from eating everything before the mandarin can get his fill?

I only have the mandarin and a fire shrimp in my tank and the shrimp is very shy and does not come out of its cave so it does not interfear with the mandarin feeding.

Also since you don't have a skimmer, you're going to end up with lots of nitrates if you feed that much. You would have to test for nitrates and if you already have nitrates at 10 ppm or more by the time you do your water change, I would not add any other fish. If you can keep your nitrates below 5 ppm, then there is still some room but not a lot.

Could you post some links, i'd love to read them.

As for biocapacity, i'd say you'd be alright. like dani3d said, the tankmates would eat the food before the mandarin could get to it all. I've had my mandarin since november. i've trained him to frozen. But he is in a QT with only a Banggai cardinal and an urchin so the mandarin isn't outcompeted.

I'd also recommend a skimmer since mandarin require heavy feedings.

I was thinking about possibly adding a skimmer I have a spare Tunze 9002 lying around. This is the link to the method I read about.

http://www.marinebreeder.org/phpbb/viewtop...=176&t=1217

I have a female mandarin and a firegoby in a refugeless/skimmerless 29G and thing's are good but I also have 25lbs of rock and feed phyto 2 times a day

Phytoplankton will be good for copepods but will not nothing for the mandarin. Have you tried giving her some fish roe? you know these little orange eggs that we see on sushi?

The thing is that mandarin in the wild eat all sort of things, not only copepods but isopods, amphypods, gasteropods (snails), some type of worms and fish eggs as well, so giving them fish roe will be a good supplement if they don't have enough copepods. There is a good chance she will eat it and then you can add other frozen food to it and she'll probably eat that as well.

How long have you have her?

A lot of the comments above are true, but a lot of advances have been made within the past few years without people realizing them and people keep passing the same information along without any question to their validity.

In truth, Green Mandarins (Synchiropus splendidus) are voracious eaters. The problem with them is their small mouth parts and their inability to recognize dead food as edible prey. If you ask Matt Wittenrich (you don't know Mandarins if you don't know Wittenrich), he'll tell you that they'll rip small snails to pieces if given the chance.

Anyway, training them involves getting them to recognized that dead food is food and it's a simple process of weaning. I hope to write up on an article on this topic in the very near future.

The fact that you see the Mandarins at the store eating frozen Brine Shrimp is already a big step. You can train them from the Frozen Brine onto frozen Mysis and that can be an ongoing stable diet.

The Green Mandarins are considered as part of my clean up crew in my system. They eat whatever drops to the substrate and will eat right out of my tweezers (I don't like to put my hands in the tank unless I have to).

I say that with the knowledge that you have and that the ones you're getting is already eating frozen, I think it's a great opportunity for a purchase.

6 month's

I have no hermit's or shrimp's so that they don't eat the copepods and egg's/food etc

the pods grow faster then she eats them

[quote name='zook' date='Mar 10 2010, 10:32 AM' post='2733873']

Matt Wittenrich book is in the mail for me

I hear good thing's so far about it

If you're referring to "The Complete Illustrated Breeder's Guide to Marine Aquarium Fishes," unfortunately, the book was written before is revolutions in rearing Synchiropus splendidus. It's a great book, nonetheless.

mostly for the pic's and info in general regarding breeding

but was also hoping that the mandarin would be in there and if not that there might be a similar fish that would give me some idea's

he did mention on mofib that he was successful with small rotifer's but there could be a increase in survivability with other first foods

I'm hoping that maybe the pelagic larva of of a certain type of harpacticoid might help. if not I'm culturing them just as food for fun