Smallest tank for a Mandarin?

I have heard from the LFS that Mandarins need a 75g+ tank to live because they only realy eat pods? How true is this? I think I believe him but was wanting to get other opinions. Anyone here keep them?

That is true. I believe every once in a while one will eat frozen foods but the majority will only eat pods. Not sure of the recommended tank size but 75g+(with lots of lr) sounds about right.

IMO, No less than an established 55gal. w/ a good sized fuge.

I can tell you from experience. I had one of these in a 29G FO tank without live rock. That meant no little copepods, amphipods, or anything else that it wanted to eat.

 

It isn't around anymore......

 

The tank size isn't as important as the number of sand creatures. As long as it has enough food supply and some LR to hide in, it should be happy. These nano reefs indicate that many "impossible" things can be done in smaller spaces than the hobby deems wise.

 

I plan on getting a replacement mandarin once I get a DSB going and FULLY stocked with sand creatures.

alex,

you may want to invest in a breeder tank as well if you're going to try the 29g again. www.ipsf.com, www.florida-aqua-farms.com, and www.oceanrider.com are all good sources of info and live foods. buy once and cultivate, it gets mucho $$$. treat the mandarin as you would a seahorse and you should be fine.

 

my 100g was enough imo for my mandarin but i don't know if i would try anything lower than 55g as glenn noted, especially as they start growing.

 

FWIW, i'd try a couple of different zones in the breeder/refugium and main tanks. different substrates, rock types, and plant forms. hair algae is actually a very good breeding medium! learn to use a turkey baster too.

I'm not an expert wait for somone else to agree with me before you spend any money or get any new creatures.

 

You could keep it in a very small tank if you had a giant refugium. it doesn't have to be an aquarium. It could be a big (reef safe) rubber maid container, aa old bath tub, horse water container, kiddie pool. you could even keep the 'fuge in the basement and pump the water upstairs. The fuge has to be established so give it like 3 months to get tons of pods.

I disagree with all of you! I think the minimum for a Mandarin is 2000 Gallons. Translated to the layman ... NOT in a home aquarium!

 

These fish have VERY specialized diets and should NOT be sold by the LFS! Nothing burns me up more than to go to a fish store and see Mandarin Gobies, Catalina Gobies, Anemones, etc.

 

Don't think I am a hippy tree hugger, but certain fish, although beautiful, belong in the ocean and in the ocean only! Yes, some people have luck with anemones. But, more often than not and why must we kill 9 out of 10 to prove it can be done? In the ocean, an anemone can reach 300+ years. What are we trying to prove by keeping one for a whole 3 years?!

 

 

To sum it up, PLEASE do not attempt a Mandarin in a home tank. And go back to the fish store and give them hell for selling it! If you think I'm spouting BS, take a few hours and look around online about them!

I would say a minimum of a 60g

I would say that a nano with a 45+ gallon fuge would be more than enough for a manderin. IMO any tank with a fuge that large is no longer a nano, but nevertheless it is possible to set-up a system with a small display and house a manderin.

I did a google search on mandarins and stumbled on a webpage where a guy claims to successfully keep a mandarin in a small tank (29 g if I remember correctly). He fed the mandarin pods he purchased from the internet, until eventually weaning it to accept dry fish food.

me and my brother had great luck with our mandarin gobys! he has a 20 gal and it's doing well, his fuge is only 5 gal. i have a 75 gal tank with a 50 gal fudge and everything is sweet.. the secret is when we bought the mandarins we made sure it was eating frozen food, brine ,misid shrimp ... we asked the lfs to show us that it did.. had it now for a year with no problems...

it's very hard to get a mandarin to eat foods that aren't live. It's almost as hard as getting a dog to eat table scraps. wait, bad comparison. X)

 

In any case a read a cool trick recently from a mandarin owner. they claimed to have a healthy mandarin for over 2 years. they had a fuge. they also kept a tank with rock and algae by a window that received lots of sunlight. every week they would switch the rock in their fuge with the rock from the tank in the sun. In a nano you might want to use several smaller rocks and switch one everyother day. I've never tried it and havn't even seen it with mine own eyes so remember my warning.

 

 

 

 

I'm not an expert wait for somone else to agree with me before you spend any money or get any new creatures. the man with the most limited intellegance is the man who does not the limit to his intelegance.

tgrupert: i dont think one rock a day will give enough pods to feed a mandarin.

 

voodoo: if you really want a mandarin get one thats eating frozen foods like killyah said. but i would say that its a good choice to leave mandarins in large systems or just plain old leave them in the wild.

I'll try to find the source, but they did it only once a week and said it had been alive for two years.

cool id like to see that.

where in NY are you??

 

-Jeremy

I didn't spend ALL the time looking for it, but I can't seem to find it.

 

I'm in westchester county the home of America's favorate senator Hilary Clinton, DMX, Washington Irving, John D. Rockefeller, Michael Crichton, Ralph Lauren, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, Positive Wasserman Jones (real person), Robert Merrill, Jesse Norman, Norman Rockwell, Horace Greeley, D. W. Griffith, Lou Gehrig, Carrie Chapman Catt, Mel Gibson, Pee-Wee Herman (free pee wee), Alfred Thayer Mahan, Jonathan Karpoff, Gore Vidal, Gavin MacLeod, John Schneider, Bonnie Blair, Dave Barry, Peter Gallagher, Amelia Earhart, Mary Tyler Moore.

me and my brother had great luck with our mandarin gobys!

i hate when people say mandarins are gobys MANDARINS ARE DRAGONETS!!! i just wish some people would at least acknowledge that they are mandarins not gobys,Chris

me and my brother had great luck with our mandarin gobys!

 

I hate when people use improper english! It's my brother and I god damn it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i just wish some people would at least acknowledge that this is the correct way.

Sorry, I forgot to mention that... Thanks killyah for bringing it up! If you can find a LFS that claims that they carry manderins that eat frozen mysis... then put them to the test. Ask them to show you that their manderins will eat frozen mysis. If they do, they are fairly easy to keep, so long as you provide ample feedings (thanks Tgrupert for giving me a heads up on this sentence... it's all fixed now!! LOL). I wouldn't recommend trying to ween them off live and on to frozen food yourself, it is extreamly difficult.

Wow, thx for all the replies. I didn't think that they would do well in my small tank. I just had to prove it to my girlfriend. I'm sure I'm not the first to have to do this.

this guy claims to keep his mandarin in a 10 gallon tank alive with pods from the internet.

 

"I'm still specticle"

He's had it for 6 weeks and has spent over 100 dollars feeding it. that's like 2.50 a day to keep it alive. also he is thinking of feeding it to his anemone. I'm surprized no one flamed him. maybe the tang police are on vactation.

Voodoo&Friends,I'm looking to setup a 20 after the first of the year and had asked the same question on a dif.post.This is what I got back......."Make sure the lr is cycled, if it is not, then you have to go through the cycling process before you can get a microcritter population to grow. It is this microcritter population that will feed your dragonette. Once your lr is properly cycled or if you start out with already cycled lr, then you need to get your hands on a chunk of lr from an established reef tank or sump to seed your tank with microcritters. It doesn't have to be a big peice of lr, it merely has to come from a tank with no wrasses. Wrasses are very efficient predators and even a small one can wipe out a microcritter population in a large tank. The best place is a fish free sump or refugium where you can see the microcritters."

 

"If you can get some caulerpa, then put it in your tank, in my experience it seems to help the microcritter population grow much faster. For my 10 gal tank and my current sump, I use an $8.00 75 watt Halogene light I buy from Fred Meyers or Wal Mart. The caulerpa grows like crazy on this light source. Once the microcritter population is established, then you can put the caulerpa in a refugium or sump if you don't like it in your tank. The corals will absolutely need a whole different type of lighting system. But it is easy to upgrade once you are ready to."

 

"Honest to God, every time I have set up a sump or tank this way, the microcritter population was on overload after about a month from the cycling period. Most people, me included way back when, start putting fish and coral in right away, this actually takes longer to establish a microcritter colony. If you are patient for your dragonette's food source to establish itself, then the of the stuff happens real, real fast!""After you get your tank cycled, put in the caulerpa and the microcritter seed lr, and the light, then be patient. For the first month on my ten gallon tank I did not do any water changes, only evaporative fill ups-this was out of laziness, though. I also left the light on 24/7 to keep the caulerpa from spawning and then dying off. There was no other fish in the system, snails would be OK, so would hermits or any other janitors that didn't prey on microcritters. It was completely by accident that the microcritter population grew, I only wanted a place to put excess lr and grow some caulerpa for my tang. But after a month or so the population of mysis, copopods, and amphipods was tremendous. They were everywhere, the sand and lr looked like it was moving!"" ABSOLUTELY NO WRASSES! they will outcompete with your dragonette for the microcritters."

So..Does anyone see any problems with this way of going about it.I really dont care for any fish in my tank but this one looks to cool to pass up.

Originally posted by tgrupert

 

 

I hate when people use improper english! It's my brother and I god damn it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i just wish some people would at least acknowledge that this is the correct way.

 

I hate it when people who obviously don't know what they're talking about flame other people for "improper English." In spite of what your 3rd grade English teacher may have told you, the language does in fact allow object pronouns in coordinated subject noun phrases. It is just a convention of writing that prohibits this.

 

Conventions of writing prohibit a lot of things people do on these forums, including using six bajillion exclamation points, so unless you are willing to limit yourself to posting only in a formal essay style (how fun would that be?), cut people some slack.

 

The next time you feel an urge to flame someone for grammar, go to the library instead, and check out a copy of Language Myths, edited by Laurie Bauer and Peter Trudgill.

Dude, I was kidding. I use some of the worst english here. I also don't care if you call your fish a mandarin goby, or even a mandarin guppy. some people take the internet a little too seriously.