Official Mandarin and Dragonet Show off thread

[Clownin_around29]

This is the best thread on any forum! Alot of you are changing the game of mandarin keeping.

[oldSWseamomma]

Update on Daenery. She is eating great and is now exploring the whole tank instead of behind the LR pile - ha ! Her favorite spot to eat in the tank is the back-right corner so when the pumps get shut off she now knows it's supper time! Here she is blowing me kisses waiting for her mixture of Nutramar Ova, BB shrimp (frozen), & spectrum pellets. I have had her going on 4 weeks now and for awhile she wasn't eating pellets but now she's back to eating those too. In about a week I will put in another bottle of pods. Her best bud is my clown.

 

Kat thanks again for the great name for her ! And I am sooooo happy that Bella is doing better :0)

[Voodoodol]

Here's my baby. I've had it since Jan. of this year. It was tiny when I got it.

 

[kismetsh]

Here's my baby. I've had it since Jan. of this year. It was tiny when I got it.

 

 

 

If the mandy is in the same tank with the new carpet, you definitely need to take action to put a divider in until the carpet is moved to the other tank. Mandarins are frequently eaten by them due to their habits. That would be a terrible shame!

[Voodoodol]

If the mandy is in the same tank with the new carpet, you definitely need to take action to put a divider in until the carpet is moved to the other tank. Mandarins are frequently eaten by them due to their habits. That would be a terrible shame!

 

They are in different tanks. The mandarin is in my 24g nano and the big carpet is in the 30g and will soon be moved to a 40b.

 

I'm about to post some random tank shots in the members aquariums forum. I haven't shared many pics of my tanks and I'd like to. Check it out later.

[xzeror]

Day 1 of training. My red Mandy Lucy . She devoured so many brine before I got my phone and even started recording and she continued. Day after acclamation.

 

some pics.. she's SOOO TINYYY

 

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[oldSWseamomma]

What a tiny little cutie patootie !!! She is soooooooo cute

[happyhour99]

wow thats awesome

[metrokat]

Very cute

[Nanoboss4]

sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo cutte :0 i might die from cute overdose

[Tamberav]

Lucy is cute, where did you get her? LA has some red's in stock but they can't guarantee sex

[metrokat]

How is errbady? I don't get to see Bella too much, she looks like she's having a grand old time finding the new pods. I have not seen her charging at Draco either. Maybe she is getting used to being in her new home.

[xzeror]

Lucy is eating live brine on every feeding. I have her in a breeder box in my hob fuge that way maybe she can eat some pods if they manage to get in the breeder box between feedings. I'm going to go and buy some frozen brine, and try to get some worms! Ill be trying frozen brine in a few days. That's if she keeps up her awesome feeding habits.

 

I had a quick question if anyone has tried to enrich their brine shrimp by adding supplements and if so which ones have you guys used.

 

Good luck everyone!

[metrokat]

take the amount of brine you are going to feed in a separate container. add selcon and phytoplankton or very finely crushed spirulina flakes. aerate for at least an hour and then you can feed the tank with them.

[metrokat]

BBS for todays feed have hatched. Hopefully Bella will eat some. She ate a couple of black worms today. Draco looks like he's going to burst with the amount he ate, he looks enormous. He is not running away from her anymore. She is less agressive too. All good. I worry about her since her frozen training did not finish. The tank and fuge are seeded with pods. I'll continue with live black worms when I can since it caused my Clownfish to spawn and they fish in general love them.

[xzeror]

none of my lfs or pet stores ive asked have had black worms. they only have blood worms >_<. has anyone tried blood worms?

[Voodoodol]

none of my lfs or pet stores ive asked have had black worms. they only have blood worms >_<. has anyone tried blood worms?

 

It's my understanding that blood worms have no nutritional value for saltwater animals. It's for freshwater only.

[Nanoboss4]

bloodworms are good for training but again, not very nutritionalo

[Tamberav]

Some mandarin related questions for you guys.

 

1. Do tisbe pods swim at all? I thought they were the kind to crawl on rocks but when I turned my pumps off I noticed small white specs moving around on the back wall (painted black so easier to see) and swimming in the water near the surface. They are really tiny and I did dose tisbe pods months ago. They are about the same size but so small I can't be sure what they are.

 

All my live rock went into my fuge so it was nice to see something made it up the pump and into the display.

 

2. Do any of you dose phyto? If so, what kind? I was thinking about dosing it in my fuge when pumps are off every week or two just for a pod booster.

 

Edit: upon closer inspection they are EVERYWHERE! All over the glass and so many swimming that my water looks like I have a bunch of moving dust in it. They swim (or crawl) in zig zag short bursts then stop.. then off they go again. Do those sound like tiny tisbe pods? I really hope so although my mandy doesn't peck as much as he did when I first got him.. he is lazy and likes to go to his corner and /beg.

 

I know they aren't hydroid jellys or spirorbid worms. I guess I know what a big pod looks like but not little ones.

 

If they are pods, not sure how I got so many. I dosed 1 bottle back in July in my 20g then moved about 15 lbs of live rock to my 40B a few weeks ago.

 

I'm only used to ever seeing the big amphipods moving around, I thought all my tisbe got ate or died or something.

[metrokat]

I dose phyto everyday.

Nanochloropsis - live

Isocrysis - live (and I just started a culture of it today too)

Tahitian blend from brine shrimp direct - 4 kinds of phyto blend

Phyto Gold S - brightwell

Phytoplex chrome- Kent

To my knowledge Tisbe pods stay close to the surfaces and do not swim freely. You might be seeing baby brine? or even hydroids in their jellyfish stage perhaps?

[Tamberav]

I dose phyto everyday.

Nanochloropsis - live

Isocrysis - live (and I just started a culture of it today too)

Tahitian blend from brine shrimp direct - 4 kinds of phyto blend

Phyto Gold S - brightwell

Phytoplex chrome- Kent

 

To my knowledge Tisbe pods stay close to the surfaces and do not swim freely. You might be seeing baby brine? or even hydroids in their jellyfish stage perhaps?

They don't look like hydroids, that would have been my first suspicion. Not sure what baby brine look like or where they would have come from. Maybe some other type of pod? I did add reefs2go pods months ago and who knows what was in that.

 

Dang thats a lot of different types of phyto!

[metrokat]

They don't look like hydroids, that would have been my first suspicion. Not sure what baby brine look like or where they would have come from. Maybe some other type of pod? I did add reefs2go pods months ago and who knows what was in that.

 

Dang thats a lot of different types of phyto!

Well, I have a little aquacutured baby Maxima clam too so I like to phyto-bomb my tank.

[AMAYEU]

I dose phyto just for the ecosystem of the tank and not for pods or the mandarin. I like having a trained mandarin without dosing pods. My tank has zero pods due to a six line I had years back.

 

I use reef nutrition phyto.

[xzeror]

how often are you guys feeding your mandy's? I was doing three times a day but she didnt seem to interested when the feedings were so often. I'm doing twice a day now.

[JoeDigiorgio]

Probably my favorite aspect of running tanks without filters is the amount of extra micro-fauna you reserve. My tanks run on powerheads and water changes alone and when the pumps kick off, the amount of life clinging to the water's surface is mind blowing. I get blooms of some sort of calanoid copepod every couple of weeks that literally form clouds under the LEDs when the powerheads kick off. I see all sorts of little rotifer-like organisms, little tiny worms and what I think may be hermit crab larvae all the time. Everything flocks to the beams of light when the flow stops.

 

I honestly never see any tisbe on the glass though. I had some in the previous tank the mandarins were in but I don't think they made it through the move.