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How long do mandarins live in captivity?


mzoo

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I have a beautiful little female mandarin and she eats frozen mysis right from my syringe. She also hunts for pods and other microfauna all day and so is really healthy. She especially loves to stalk and eat stomatella! She is so cute and comical and we love her like a child.

 

I have had her for almost two years, how long has anyone on this forum been able to keep a mandarin so far?

 

I am asking because I hope we have her for a long time!!

 

Thanks.

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Have read that even a plump manadarin who eats pods/microfauna and accepts frozen food too may still be somehow deficient or lacking in certain natural dietary requirements and so could die suddenly/mysteriously in time. That just because we have trained our mandarins to accept prepared food and they are not visibly emaciated, this does not insure their long-term survival.

 

Have not been able to find any documentation for them living in captivity beyond 2-3 years.

 

But I figure, someone here must have had a mandarin at least that long, maybe longer??!!!

 

Let me know!! fingerscrossed

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I have an ORA spotted and an ORA blue mandarin for about a year now. You can try diversifying what you feed your fish...along with mysis, you can train her to eat cyclopeeze (excellent pod food) and Nutrimar Ova...with variety, you can ensure she gets everything she needs. along with whatever live food she can hunt down on her own. Sounds like your mandarin is a great little and tame fish. Mine both wait at the designated spot for my syringe. They are my favorite fish by far. mike

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Flying Bones
I have an ORA spotted and an ORA blue mandarin for about a year now. You can try diversifying what you feed your fish...along with mysis, you can train her to eat cyclopeeze (excellent pod food) and Nutrimar Ova...with variety, you can ensure she gets everything she needs. along with whatever live food she can hunt down on her own. Sounds like your mandarin is a great little and tame fish. Mine both wait at the designated spot for my syringe. They are my favorite fish by far. mike

 

 

Are those in the same tank?

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excellent suggestion Mikel, I have in fact been thinking of getting her to eat some other types of food. Should be easy, cause like I said she trusts me and practically eats from my hand.

 

She is a gorgeous fish with an awesome personality and after two years we just love her so much. The queen of the tank for sure! and I will do whatever I can to keep her happy & healthy.

 

Glad yours are doing so well also. :D

 

We have thought about getting a little female spotted manadarin to keep her company but was not sure if they would compete & fight. My tank is only 20 g.

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Reply..

 

!) Yes, my blue and my spotted are both in the same 20 Gal long tank. They are both males (both with very prominent dorsel fins...display to one another often) but they have never fought (knock on wood). They eat together, and the glass jar "bedroom" of the spotted (who came first so got first dibs for accomodations) is right next to the terra cotta pot "bedroom" of the blue. They will ALWAYS sleep in their respective "bedrooms"...without fail.

 

2) You want to be careful not to assume that two females will never fight. My two males do not fight, but I think that's an abberation. You may also be lucky as well. But the usual understanding is that two mandarins of the same sex will fight and attack one another until one is gone--or dead. So if you dont want to take a chance, and you are sure your fish is female, it may be wiser to simply get a boy fish. Males are also much more common, especially for captive bred mandarins from ORA. Just ask your pet store to specifically get a male for you frm ORA.

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I had mine for about 3 years then one afternoon I went to clean the glass and he was missing. A quick look and I noted the maxi min had him almost gone.

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awe makes me want a mandarin but i dont wanna kill him from keeping him in the tank

 

Just make sure you get one that's eating prepared foods. You can feed them PE Mysis which is gutloaded with nutrients to make sure they stay healthy. Mine gets a mix of bloodworms and Hikari Mysis as it doesn't like the big PE Mysis, but he's going only going on 6 months in my tank.

 

It's funny to watch them eat the bloodworms, they get slurped up like spaghetti :)

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How cute...thought mine was the only one who had a "bedroom". Every morning when I leave to work I peek in on her sleeping and for some reason it makes me happy to see her all tucked in. She wakes up a little later.

 

I had a boy, cause I thought she was lonely, and she beat him up! gave him to the LFS and he is fat & happy (but single).

 

Guess I will not get another manadarin at all, she's pretty bratty.

 

She will not eat krill (too big) and does not like cyclops or reef plankton...just hikari mysis... but have been thinking of the blood worms and now will get them for her!!! It can only enrich her diet.

 

Lepomis, what exactly happened to your manadarin? Three years, that's great. Sorry he met with misfortune.

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I bought mine from the LFS and from day one the fish ate what ever food I put in the tank. The trick was it had to be wedged so he could get it. I used to run some mysis, blood worms, etc.. across a piece of velcro and then wedge into the live rock while feeding the more active feeders. No running it down since they are such deliberate focussed feeders. He also had a 75 gallon with plenty of live rock and macros to pick pods from. I did not see any signs of him going down hill. Still feeding, actively search, no sores or wounds, tank paramters all good, etc.... I really think it was just a case of scooting/settling in the wrong place. Stuff is going to happen like that when you have nems in a tank.

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This is why I really do think these mandarins are only going to prosper if they are by themselves, or with very docile tankmmates. Also, they will only be successful if the keeper is willing to sacrifice the "clean tank" idea and focus on the fish. Target feeding and stopping all water current so that the fish can eat in peace for at least two hours a day is often "too much work" for some, and also against keeping bio load down to prevent algae. If you are tank proud, please please dont keep a mandarin. They will starve and die a miserable death in a prescine tank.

 

Your fish survived on live food for awhile, but most likely died from starvation in the end. A few wedge of bloodworms will not be enough. They are like hummingbirds; they must eat constantly given their very constant and high motabolism. A few pieces of food a day can only go so long before they decline; they certainly will not thrive. Many do not realize what a truly healthy and "fat" mandarin looks like...they think their skinny fish is normal, when in fact, the fish is already going downhill. A healthy mandarin is one that, when you look from the top down, all you see is its prominent head and gills, then an oval body that literally ends abruptly with the tail fin (it should not taper to the tail). The overall body shape needs to look more oval than streamlined. mike

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Flying Bones

Mikel,

 

Appreciate your insight, maybe you can share more about how you keep your Mandarins because to me it sounds like you have a different method than I have learned about in all of my reading about them.

 

Also, can you share a picture of yours?

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Hi;

 

I dont mind sharing my insight, but you should know that it is from personal experience, and may not be consistent with the general view on mandarins. I have never kept wild caught mandarins, so I know of them only through what I have read about them. It would seem logical that, given their (wild caught) finicky eating habit, a large and well established tank should be a basic requirement.

 

But my ORA mandarins seem very different. First, they eat the food that I give them, and given their high motabolism, I knew right from the start that they will be pretty needy and hands-on compated to other marine fish. You just cannot plop one into a big and fully stocked tank and expect it to live and thrive. They were bred and raised in barebottom tanks, and used to more human interactions. I learned from speaking with people at ORA that they love Nutrimar OVA, and will accept Cyclopeeze and mysis as well (not as quickly, but will). So I began with my green spotted, and a few months later, I got the blue. I syringe fed, and actively took care to make sure they ate all the time. I was surprised that they did not fight. But I knew that, given the frequency of my feeding (three times a day), the water needed to be changed frequently (10% every three days). But this chore was acceptable because my tank is small (20 Gal). So here I am.

 

Insight...

 

With the arrival of these ORA fish, their acceptance of frozen foods (with patience and care), and their required frequent feeding to thrive, the whole general set of rules for mandarins is flip upside down. It makes more sense to keep them in dedicated tanks that are relative small in size so that water changes can be done frequently and easily...so no big tanks needed but you really need to be engaged. They remain very challenging but rewarding fish to keep. Captive breeding did not make mandarins into clowns.

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This is why I really do think these mandarins are only going to prosper if they are by themselves, or with very docile tankmmates. Also, they will only be successful if the keeper is willing to sacrifice the "clean tank" idea and focus on the fish. Target feeding and stopping all water current so that the fish can eat in peace for at least two hours a day is often "too much work" for some, and also against keeping bio load down to prevent algae. If you are tank proud, please please dont keep a mandarin. They will starve and die a miserable death in a prescine tank.

 

Your fish survived on live food for awhile, but most likely died from starvation in the end. A few wedge of bloodworms will not be enough. They are like hummingbirds; they must eat constantly given their very constant and high motabolism. A few pieces of food a day can only go so long before they decline; they certainly will not thrive. Many do not realize what a truly healthy and "fat" mandarin looks like...they think their skinny fish is normal, when in fact, the fish is already going downhill. A healthy mandarin is one that, when you look from the top down, all you see is its prominent head and gills, then an oval body that literally ends abruptly with the tail fin (it should not taper to the tail). The overall body shape needs to look more oval than streamlined. mike

 

Starvation was not a factor. Mine ate prepared foods as supplement but majority was what he constantly ate picking over the 150 lbs of live rock and pod jungles.

 

greenman.jpg

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Mine loves spaghetti worms, every time I vacuum the sand bed a bunch end up in the bucket, I go thru the process of saving them and throw in them back in the tank, he goes hunts them like there's no tomorrow.

 

MIKEL "Also, they will only be successful if the keeper is willing to sacrifice the "clean tank" idea and focus on the fish"

 

I think you are right on the spot with this comment; overly clean tanks are less likely to support a mandarin long term. I left mine without any supplemental feedings for 9 days (while on vacation) only to find him waiting for my syringe live and kicking (not that I recommend not feeding) but then again my tank is far from a clean spotless tank.

 

Good luck!

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The only definitive way to know for sure how old a mandarin is...is to buy one that is relatively young from a captive breeding system. Wild caught ones vary in age, and since the trade favors big and flashy males, these are taken more often than the smaller and perhaps younger ones, or females. So if you buy a big flashy male wild caught....chances are very good that it is at the prime of its life, or is already heading downhill in terms of age and physical health. Then, if you keep it for another three years, the fish should be pretty old. I figure a well cared for mandarin in captivity, given plenty of good food and staying very plump, should be about 7-10 years..like a similar sized clown. Both my ORA mandains are 1.3 to 1.5 years old at most.

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Thank you everyone for the valuable insight!

 

I figure my little one is about 2.5 years old (she was very small when I got her, just a baby really) and we don't think she is wild. She learned to eat at the breeder or the LFS.

 

She is a good eater, and, like I said, rules the tank. We only have other gobies and they pick from the water while she eats the little pile I squirt for her on the sand.

 

We used to do weekly changes, but now have a really good skimmer because I am growing some SPS frags.

 

I also buy her a bottle of pods when I am feeling flush and put them in at nite. She wakes up the next day and thinks it's Christmas and santa came. My clams like the phyto that comes with the pods.

 

I agree, in my experience the best success with mandarins comes from a hands on approach...making sure they eat, that no one grabs their food, that others have enough food too, that the water stays clean and you don't support too many potential pests (worms, etc.) This is assuming you also have good live rock and some microfauna as well. Adding pods every now & then helps too. They are worth the effort!!!

 

I sure hope we do have her for 8 years. She makes me very happy.

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It's impossible for your fish to be 2.5 years old and NOT be wild caught. ORA is the only ones in the world with captive breeding system and they did not release the spotted mandarins before last late spring. You have a very well acclimated wild caught mandarin...very rare. Live food additive into your tank will always be welcomed by mandarins...it just gets a bit expensive. Best with the fish. mike

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  • 4 years later...

Sad news. Mandarine died yesterday. We had her 6 years in our tank and figured she was about 8 months to one year old when we got her...so she lived 7 years. From everything I read that's pretty standard for a manadarin who has lots of pods to eat plus eats frozen foods. Still is does not help heal my broken heart. Yes I am broken hearted over this little baby fish. She was our best friend, so funny, so smart, so pretty.

So if anyone wants to know...they can live about 7 years in captivity. It went by so fast. She got old: stopped swimming on the rocks, was missing pods when she would go to peck them (her eyes seemed like they were getting bad) and even though she kept eating right to the end, it was just her time to go. I have lost other fish (firefish live about 3 years tops) and when fish get old they go fast. Fine one day, weird and sick the next day, dead the day after that. No Mandarin disease, not starving, she just got old. RIP Mandarine I will miss you every day :(

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