Official Mandarin and Dragonet Show off thread

[toddrparr]

8 minutes ago, banasophia said:

Hi, @toddrparr, congrats on your new addition! Is it captive bred, or wild caught? Check out the Facebook page The Copepod House for lots of great info on culturing pods, and some totally different methods that I’m hoping to try too... the more pods the better!! 

 

The light is for growing the chaeto, and the chaeto is to help with nutrient export since it takes up nutrients as it grows and also provides a place for the pods to hang out. Growth of the chaeto has been a bit slow with the light I am using, so if you haven’t gotten one yet you may want to find one that works better to promote macro growth.

I got a wild caught, my LFS had him for about a month in one of their frag tanks and he's chubby. I plan on training it eventually. I'll defiantly check out the FB page, I have a batch of pods coming from algae barn tomorrow to start my culture.

[kimberbee]

I know this is the show-off thread but I was hoping some mandarin owners might chime in. 

 

Thinking ahead to where I want to get one of my tanks - how do you think mandarins would do in an RFA dominant tank? I am considering and upgrade for my 10 gallon to a 20. Would focus on RFA's, gorgs (some non-photo) and sun corals. I figure I'd need to feed the corals a lot and could therefore overfeed a fish as well since it would have to be able to export heavy nutrients anyway. 🤔

[phasezero]

I'm on a mission to fatten my girl mandarin up. I have been feeding her nutramar ova the last 2 years but shes never really eaten much of it and has always been pretty skinny. It got really bad when my last bag of nutramar ran out a month ago and every store out there was out of stock. She's definitely not in the typical ideal tank for a mandarin to be sustained in so I'm going the extra mile to try and culture tisbe/tigger/brine shrimp. I isolated her into a 10gallon tank and I'm just loading up the tank with freshly hatched brine shrimp. I'm very happy to see her taking bites every few seconds all day long. Hoping she starts to put on some weight.

 

 

I came across a video of my old tank with my spotted mandarin pair which I lost in a power outage and it made me miss it all. Hoping I can get my current tank back to what it was years ago. This spotted pair of mandarins were so easy to take care of. Only fed them once a day on OVA and they were even spawning. This was all in a 30 gallon tank. 

 

 

[banasophia]

On 3/26/2019 at 9:41 AM, kimberbee said:

I know this is the show-off thread but I was hoping some mandarin owners might chime in. 

 

Thinking ahead to where I want to get one of my tanks - how do you think mandarins would do in an RFA dominant tank? I am considering and upgrade for my 10 gallon to a 20. Would focus on RFA's, gorgs (some non-photo) and sun corals. I figure I'd need to feed the corals a lot and could therefore overfeed a fish as well since it would have to be able to export heavy nutrients anyway. 🤔

Hey @kimberbee, sorry I missed this before. I have 8 RFAs in my Biocube 16 with my Biota captive bred mandarin and I haven’t had any issues. I just ordered a female as a companion for my male, I’ll keep you posted on how she does. 🙂

[banasophia]

2 hours ago, phasezero said:

I'm on a mission to fatten my girl mandarin up. I have been feeding her nutramar ova the last 2 years but shes never really eaten much of it and has always been pretty skinny. It got really bad when my last bag of nutramar ran out a month ago and every store out there was out of stock. She's definitely not in the typical ideal tank for a mandarin to be sustained in so I'm going the extra mile to try and culture tisbe/tigger/brine shrimp. I isolated her into a 10gallon tank and I'm just loading up the tank with freshly hatched brine shrimp. I'm very happy to see her taking bites every few seconds all day long. Hoping she starts to put on some weight.

 

 

I came across a video of my old tank and mandarins and made me miss it all. Hoping I can get my tank back this. This spotted pair of mandarins were so easy to take care of. Only fed them once a day on OVA and they were even spawning. This was all in a 30 gallon tank. 

 

 

Wow, what a beautiful tank, and gorgeous fish. I had read about how much mandarins love nutramar ova, but I’ve never been able to get my hands on any since getting my mandarin a year ago.

 

Looks like your girl is eating the baby brine shrimp well, so that’s good. One thing I observed in the beginning with my mandarin was that he would swim up to the surface to eat the pods and baby brine shrimp attracted to the light, so I would sprinkle really small whole and crushed pellet food on the surface so he would simultaneously be eating the pellet food, both for the sake of the nutrients and to develop the taste for it. To feed that way, I did it with only the blues on in the beginning... then he got used to eating that way and would do it with the whites on too. Not sure if that would work for your fish, but it may be worth a try. I used to feed like that twice a day, now I just do once, in the evening.

 

Also, if you’re not already in it, I recommend joining The Copepod House group on Facebook... Steven Parker, the guy that started it, has an interesting outdoor method for raising copepods, and people share lots of other ideas in that group as well. I kept a couple cultures for a few months and it was nice to be able to add pods to my tank once/week... I only stopped the cultures because they developed some algae that looked like briopsis and I didn’t want to risk adding briopsis to my tank. 

 

Good luck fattening your girl up... she’s a real beauty. 🤗

 

 

 

 

[phasezero]

On 4/28/2019 at 10:27 AM, banasophia said:

Wow, what a beautiful tank, and gorgeous fish. I had read about how much mandarins love nutramar ova, but I’ve never been able to get my hands on any since getting my mandarin a year ago.

 

Looks like your girl is eating the baby brine shrimp well, so that’s good. One thing I observed in the beginning with my mandarin was that he would swim up to the surface to eat the pods and baby brine shrimp attracted to the light, so I would sprinkle really small whole and crushed pellet food on the surface so he would simultaneously be eating the pellet food, both for the sake of the nutrients and to develop the taste for it. To feed that way, I did it with only the blues on in the beginning... then he got used to eating that way and would do it with the whites on too. Not sure if that would work for your fish, but it may be worth a try. I used to feed like that twice a day, now I just do once, in the evening.

 

Also, if you’re not already in it, I recommend joining The Copepod House group on Facebook... Steven Parker, the guy that started it, has an interesting outdoor method for raising copepods, and people share lots of other ideas in that group as well. I kept a couple cultures for a few months and it was nice to be able to add pods to my tank once/week... I only stopped the cultures because they developed some algae that looked like briopsis and I didn’t want to risk adding briopsis to my tank. 

 

Good luck fattening your girl up... she’s a real beauty. 🤗

 

 

 

Thanks for the pod group suggestion and for the tips on how you get yours to eat pellets. Your mandy looks very healthy! Keep up the good work. I'm pretty impressed by those Biota mandarins. I saw a bunch of baby ones in the reef store a couple months ago and I had to resist with all my might to not take one home with me. It felt wrong to buy a new mandarin when I already had one who was starving and wasting away at home.