Green Mandarin,

This morning on my way to work I stopped at a LFS . This particular store has a small saltwater section they focus mainly on dog and cat products. I was looking in the saltwater tank and to my amazement I spotted a Green Mandarin, it appears to be healthy. He was in a tank with some Domino and Three stripe Dansels. I asked the guy how long he had hi9m he said for about three weeks. I looked closer in the tank and I did not see any pods, at all, the substrate was actualy crushed coral and shells,. I asked him what he eats and he said the same as the Dansels, ( flake food) . The Green Mandarin was moving around a lot, There was also a dead dansal in the tank every one was feeding from, I thought I saw the GM nip the body. I always wanted this particular fish, one of tyhe reasons why I took up this hobby. I was debatting on getting the fish today ( may fake illness @ work to leave early to go and grab him) but a part of me wants to wait until Saturday to get him ( incase LFS guys was lying) . If I go back today I may ask LFS dud to feed the tank so I can see him feed. Also if he check out ok and does eat some flake , will he become "finicky" when and if I put him in my tanks and he begins to feed on some pods???? HELP Help

do not buy that fish without seeing it eat first. make sure it eats the flake and doesn't simply take the flake in and spit it out (lots of fish do that).

that said, don't buy this fish. they can become finicky when moved and they are simply not worth the risk.

Unless you know you can support, have a fuge or plan on buying lots of pods online,

don't impulse buy.

if the lfs is reputable you can either put a deposit down or prepay it and have them hold onto the fish for a a couple of days to a week. if they're lying, they're buying. not you.

otoh, you can't ask them to hold 100-fish for weeks as they can't reasonably occupy that much non-selling space. but 1 or 2 fish isn't going to break them but it will give you an indication of the general health of the livestock and the lfs's ability (or bs). this is a good gauge of a lfs's honesty, skill, service-orientation, and quality-level. good ones allow a customer to pay and them to hold. poor ones want to move fish asap before they die on them. hth

It's possible to keep Mandarin if you have a well stocked refugium. I have been keeping a small female green mandarin for about a year now in my 15 gallon tank. I have a three gallon refugium feeding into it from above. My mandarin is extremely picky. I occasionally see her eating amphipods and live baby brine shrimp. I have a plenty of amphipods, copepods and mysis in my refugium. I feed some live phytoplankton that I culture to the refugium every two to three days. I have a neon goby and a peppermint shrimp in the same tank, but I am very careful not to add anything that might compete with my mandarin for food. So far she has been plump and happy looking.

Tomoko

Don't buy it. I have never had any luck with these fish.

They become grey mandarins when they die.

I did a lot of reading over at wetwebmedia with essentially the same question in mind and got the very strong impression that even if it eats flake etc., that's not going to give it everything it need (fatty acids etc.) and you'll probably still be in trouble, but hey that's just secondhand info I'm passing along.

I think that i read somewhere that some of the less picky green mandarins will eat live blackworms which are far more easy to get than some of the other food options for them...

those worms are for freshwater, it wouldnt work. Ive seen them being fed to mandarin and its a huge mess. Besides, the only way to keep a mandarin without a huge tank is if you have no life. Trust me, I've tried.

so the blackworms wont even last a few minutes? long enough for a starving mandarin to eat some of them... they arent very big fish, so i cant imagine that they would need many.

Fresh water creatures lack essential fatty acids and protiens that marine animals need to survive. The worms would not work long term even if they were eaten.

Yea and don't stick it in a tank with a tube anenome!

the worms break up when pecked at and die instantly which means your mandarin wont be interested but for a second, if at all.

i have tried in the past to feed black worms to a mandarin. becouse i had read somewhere that they would eat it the worms die in seconds and the mandarin didn't look even once.

waste of time and money