Spotted mandarin dragonet Gobie

How fast would one deplete the copepod population in a tank less than 10g.'s? I dont have one yet or anything but was thinking of one for my 5.5g. I have an absolutly HUGE copepod population ! They are all over the walls, the substrate, the rock , the PH. the filter blah blah blah........I realy mean alot! THem seem to be multiplying like rabbits.

I have heard that this is the main reason one can not be kept is the starvation factor in a small tank. Since I have a Copepod farm do you think I will be ok with one?

Hmmm, 5.5 gallon... Huge amount of 'pods. Ummm, I'm gonna say,hmmmm, divide by 3, carry the two, times pi.... ABOUT 136 hours, or not quite 6 days. It was the "vagueness" of HUGE that prevents me from getting any closer than that...

(they NEVER stop eating..... )

Oh realy? Bumber. Well the amount of copepod's I seem to have range in the thousands ( at least that a relative guess) I have about 300 or soo huge ones and about 1700 minute little feller's. So how would I up my anti with the copepod's breeding rate? A Fuge? HOB fuge. substitute?

Add a 60 gallon sump with 90 pounds of live rock...

It takes a large system to provide enough room for a steady supply of copepods to feed it.

Bumber then this truely should not be offered in this hobby if it's sole food is copepods and they are so hard to keep in supply.

Sounds like it would be a slow cruel death.

They are fine in large tanks and not difficult to keep. You forget that many people keep reef tanks anywhere from 30-gallons and up. People just have to be smart about keeping them and understand their needs.

Because an animal has special requirements doesn't mean they shouldn't be offered in the hobby.

Yes your right. But if they deplete their food supply so fast and require so mugh of it because they never stop eating then in escence they need and undepletable food source so they will never go hungry right? So to do that you would have to have a refugium with nothing but cuplera or somthing like that in the fuge. for the podes to multiply and nothing else in the tank that would eat it. I am sure that they are possible to keep as they are every where in pet stores and wouldnt be there otherwise.

I am just saying that if the animal has a very real chance at starvation due to competion of other fish or organism's, and even without due to just plain eating them all up ( providing that is all the food it will eat are podes?) then it should be left in the wild or be kept in no less than 55g.'s.

BTW is there any other food stuffs they will eat at all?

I have recently read that they have only been a discovered species since 1976. Is that considered relativly new in terms of home aquari keeping?

I have also read that they will eat baby brine shrimp? T/F ?

Thank you very much for all your help and replies.

The key is not how many you have, it is to how many you feed it at a time. As all know, a fish, given food, will continue to eat as long as the food is available. That is kind of why they say to only feed what the fish will eat in 5 minutes on the food containers because they could actually eat themselves to death.

You put a mandarine in a tank with a thousand pods, it will eat 900 of them the first day and you are now left with 100 pods and a whole lot of fish crap. By day 2, the population is depleted and it will eventually starve (although not for a while due to fat buildup from the 2 day eating spree). If they were all kept in a fuge and you added just enough to the tank for it to hunt out and eat per day while maintaining a good overall population in the fuge, you could keep it for a good amount of time. The problem is, it is a pain in the ass to capture the proper amount of pods everyday to feed to the fish. This would however allow you to keep it if you had the patience.

Anything can be done, it is just the level of difficulty it takes to do so.

Ahhhhh I see said the blind man. Thank you . I realy think I will try this in my 5.5 with a 2 1/2 fuge set up for pod growth. I know they multeply like mad in cuplera so theres my breeding habitat. I will let you know how it does and how hard it is over the next month.

that setup wont be able to support the mandarin for long.

Then if the fish starts looking like he is loosing mass or the pode population dies down I will simply trade him back to my LFS or hwere ever I buy one. I do not have one yet. only thinking of it.

Can't stop ya... just urge you to rethink it....

http://www.wetwebmedia.com/mandarins.htm

Liquid,

Read your response and I understand your logic completely,mmmmkay? But there are exceptions to the rule in everything. You cannot "dictate" the diet of a dragonette in this way and hope for it to survive very long. Think about what you eat in a day and what your daily routine is like... how long do you think you can remain healthy and active, let alone survive if I now allow you to only eat say a saltine and a small piece of cheese everyday? Not very long eh? Well unless your genetic makeup is akin to a slug...lol Not trying to sound like a d!ck by any means, just get a little more bothered about this fish than most as it's my favorite... just kinda sad in a way, like the "candy" I can't have. As was pointed out earlier... I TRULY wish this was one fish that was not available to the hobbyist.... there are success stories of course, not denying that. There are WAY WAY WAY more failures though.

I have had a Mandrain in my 80 gal for over 5 years now. Very cool fish but he does eat all day long. I have about 150 lbs of live rock in my tank and that really helps my pods. I also use my 30 gal sump as a fuge.

Originally posted by glazer

Can't stop ya... just urge you to rethink it....

http://www.wetwebmedia.com/mandarins.htm

I TRULY wish this was one fish that was not available to the hobbyist.... there are success stories of course, not denying that. There are WAY WAY WAY more failures though.

I think this is a little near sighted.

Reefers with large tanks (75 and up) rarley have a problem with this fish. I tend to see the problem more on the smaller tanks. Maybe we should say that this fish should not be available to anybody with a tank under 75 gals....

I have actually kept a mated pair in my 80 gal for 2 years. The male had been in my tank for 5 years.

Last comment I make on this...lol

Lest you think that I am stating you HAVE to have a 150 gallon tank... it was an example. (I kept one in a 75 for a couple of years). Yes, you'll get all kinds of opinions on what the ideal size tank/amount of rock is the perfect match up.... BUT, I think there are very, VERY few that would argue a 5.5 gallon tank, fuge included is an acceptable and do-able habitat. Remember, um, we are talking about a "nano" here.

"...and that's all I gotta say 'bout that." ---- F.G.

I wasn't saying to starve the thing by feeding 1 pod a day to equal the "cracker". I meant to feed it lets say 10 pods a day or "3 square meals". We dictate the diet of our fish every day by how much flake, mysis or brine etc. we throw in the tanks for them to eat. The point was just not to give the fish access to all the pods to eat them faster then they can reproduce.

I do not condone keeping these fish either. My wife, like you, loves these fish and has begged me to get one for our 120 gallon. I refuse because of low pod population due to other carnivorous fish (mostly the psuedochromis' I love so much) that keep the population low from their constant hunting. I would not keep them, I do not feel he should keep them either in such a small tank and or fuge because I don't feel the population could be kept up to reproduce the say 10 a day needed. Some systems can manage but mine, nor his, nor most people especially nano owners can possibly keep them, at least not without driving yourself nuts to keep it happy. If he were to get one, I would suggest a 30 gallon breeder for the fuge/pod production tank. Now, who would want to have a 30 gallon fuge to keep a mandarine in a 5 gallon tank let alone go fishing everyday to catch its meals?

Saltydawg, it is not that they need so much food, because they don't. It appears that way because when introduced to a tank full of pods, they will keep eating only because the food is there. OK, look at it this way, lets say you currently feed your fish one pinch of food per day for the past year, now, you start feeding it 2 pinches per day. It will gladly eat the second pinch right up as fast as the first. Does this mean you have been feeding your fish half of what they need to eat? No, it doe not, you could probably start feeding them 4 pinches per day and they will happily eat that as well and it does not mean that you have been feeding your fish 25% of what they should be eating. It is that fish are programed to eat what ever when ever because they don't know when they will be receiving their next meal. A study was done on this about humans and why there are so many obese people now a days. Humans have been around for thousands of years but have only around the past hundred years have been able to know where the next meal will come from. Evolution has not caught up with us yet and with the advent of unlimited food has caused an outbreak of fat people (I'm not making this up, there was an actual study on this). So again, it is not that the fish needs more food then others, it is that when introduced to a tank full of food, it is just natural to keep eating.

I don't mean to sound like a Dick either, I just wanted to point out that I also do not condone nor suggest he keep it. I was mearly stating that it can be done with a lot of work. It may have seemed like I was saying to try it but I wasn't, just how it could be done. Hey, if you can come up with the food it needs great, if not, well, not great.

Yeah I realize what you are saying. Like I said before I DO NOT HAVE THE FISH . Only an idea. Yes I know that fish and humans and prety much all life forms are conditioned to their enviorment in terms of what they eat and how much they eat. They are also , like humans, Creatures of oportunity.

A study was done a long, long , long time ago about animals and food too not just human fat. Professor Pavloav ......I.E. the slobbering dog when the bell it was conditioned to hear when it was feeding time was rang..

I realize now fully what you are all saying. The fish will eat untile nothing is left if the supply dose not replentish its self and will starve. Gotch'a !

Now stop this madness you two are gonna give echother finger cramp's typing so much ! LOL

But seriously thank you for the info. !!!

i know they do a number on the pods population but maby you could ask to see in the lfs if they eat frozen foods. i have a well established pod population also have a scooter blenny in the tank as well but both eat frozen foods. both will eat brine shimp, blood worms, and small chunks of krill. they both hunt all day but also go right after the frozen stuff maby if you can find one that eats other stuff you can consider one

Here's a little testimonial from me about these fish. I have one in a 40G and about 50 lbs. of live rock and when I bought the fish (out of haste and spur of the moment) I was unaware of the exact needs of the fish. He was good for about a week before I noticed he was getting skinny, so I looked up all the information I could on the little bugger and realized my mistake. I tried feeding him the frozen brine I had in my freezer and he didn't go for it. I found a store that had live brine and he went nuts for it. Once he learned that the dropper had food I got him on frozen enriched brine and bloodworms. The whole point of this story is the fact that I hand feed this guy 3 times a day, every day, 7 days a week. I have to feed him before work, when I get home, and before i got to bed. It doesn't seem like much, but try spot feeding one fish that's a shy eater when you have two cleaner shrimp running because they smell food and a jawfish that has no problems with swimming right in his face to steal the food. He's a great fish and has a fantatic personality, but I got lucky. Most of these fish do starve because they a "VERY RELUCTANT" to take any other type of food. Let a lone frozen foods that don't move.

So please do the fish a favor and don't purchase it. Bringing it back to the store after it's eaten all the food in the tank is not the way to go. You've been forewarned that the tank is undersized by more than a factor of ten so ignorance is not an excuse.

I know you haven't purchased the fish yet and seriously I'm not trying to sound harsh, but enough of these fish die from people like ME because they didn't do the research and didn't get LUCKY with one that I can hand feed.

-Jonathan

It is my humble opinion that fish of the genus Synchiropus should not be made available in the trade due to their dependence on live food. Even in well established aquaria they usually end up starving. I have kept several species in well established reef tanks, but they were all at least 75g. I am sure most specimens are captured with poison which gives them even worse odds for survival. They are beautiful fish and they should stay in the ocean.

I didn't realize the scooter blenny was included in this. I had one in my 10g for 2 years before the tank crashed and everything died (chemical sabatoge by an EX gf). He ate anything I put in the tank.

the scooter blenny is sold as a blenny but it is actually in the dragonette family the same as the mandarins. they have and need a lot of them same requirements but the scooters will more readily accept frozen foods over the mandarins

Cool. Like I said mine would eat anything. He especially liked flake food. I would crumble it up fine and stick it in front of the PH. The food would blow all over and settle on the rocks. He would go around and clean them off. I was thinking of getting another one because I liked the one I had so much. Kinda cool they way their top fin will pop up when they are showing off. Mine was red in color and the fin had yellow tinges in it.

ah ok you have the red scooter blenny they are a pretty fish to

red scooter

if you get another one it would be best to try and determine if you have a male of female. you can have more than 1 female in a tank or a male and female but you do not want 2 males since they would fight and kill one of them off one main difference is the fin males have a higher fuller back fin where females are shorter and smaller fins

Mine looked just like that pic in the link except mine had bright yellow in the top fin.