Possibility of two spotted mandarins in a 25 gallon?

[BabyBorbonius]

1. Tank is 25 gallons, 18 inches roughly each side.

2. I am culturing copepods separately to meet the feeding requirements.

3. They will probably be the only fish in the aquarium.  I might add one small fish later that swims near the top of the aquarium, maybe.

 

My question is if I am able to find a pair and meet the feeding requirements by dosing copepods on a daily/semi-daily schedule, will a 25 gallon be big enough for the fish to have a good quality of life? I am slightly edging on the side that its too small for them, but then I saw some at the local aquarium shop and they were so small. I decided to just ask on this forum for advice. 

 

The copepod culture is doing well, currently I am just making sure that the process is stable enough to even consider mandarins. 

[Snow_Phoenix]

I think you'll have a better chance for success with a 40G breeder packed with macro (if it is sumped, that'll be better because then you can convert most of the sump into a refugium as well). 

 

Problem with pairs (I'm assuming you plan on getting a male/female of the same species) is that they will still fight each other for territory unless you provide enough barriers-in-sight (lot of macros, softies etc.) and when they spawn, they will require enormous amount of food as fuel for it. 

 

You'll need to feed them frozen & live 4x to 6x a day to really thicken them out to get to that stage. It will be a lot of work and require a lot of time too. Not trying to put you off it, but just giving a head's up. 

 

Poke around some of the older dragonet threads on the forum. There's a few of them - but one thing is consistent in all of them: dragonets *eat, eat & eat. 

[BabyBorbonius]

1 minute ago, Snow_Phoenix said:

I think you'll have a better chance for success with a 40G breeder packed with macro (if it is sumped, that'll be better because then you can convert most of the sump into a refugium as well). 

 

Problem with pairs (I'm assuming you plan on getting a male/female of the same species) is that they will still fight each other for territory unless you provide enough barriers-in-sight (lot of macros, softies etc.) and when they spawn, they will require enormous amount of food as fuel for it. 

 

You'll need to feed them frozen & live 4x to 6x a day to really thicken them out to get to that stage. It will be a lot of work and require a lot of time too. Not trying to put you off it, but just giving a head's up. 

 

Poke around some of the older dragonet threads on the forum. There's a few of them - but one thing is consistent in all of them: dragonets *eat, eat & eat. 

 

No need to worry about putting me off, the reason I asked was to get a complete picture of the ideas feasibility. My current tank does not have enough barriers its mainly a single tree structure, I doubt the mandarins will be able to take "breaks" from each other. Also, you mentioned both live and frozen, is frozen really necessary if you are able to provide enough copepods? I'm guessing the frozen was so that the fish can get a varied diet that helps meet a wider range of nutrition. I never even thought about the possible dietary increase caused by spawning and breeding.

 

I will take a look at the older dragonet threads. Might have to downgrade to one dragonet, maybe even none. Once again thanks for the help @Snow_Phoenix

[Riona]

I was looking into them for my 40 breeder.  I have never owned one before, but from what I've read, to truly be happy/healthy, a mandarin needs to be able to eat a pod about every 5 seconds, with tisbee being the most preferred for their mouth size.  There's also the "PaulB brine/mandarin feeder" (don't remember what the rules are on linking to other forums, but it comes up quickly on google) where you take a small flat round container, cut a hole in the top and replace it with a fine netting, then put some rigid airline tubing into a hole drilled on the side.  If you rinse newly hatched brine to the bottom of the airline tubing, they'll climb through the mesh to get to the top of the tank, and the mandarin can snag them as they're fighting to get out of it.  Obviously needs to be newly hatched for nutritional purposes (and those tiny mouths) but it'd give more variety to go along with the pod culture if your fish wasn't eating anything prepared.

 

I can't speak to having a pair of them in a tank, since again I've never owned one before, but if you can keep the pod culture going enough to meet the food needs, don't see why it'd be impossible from a feeding standpoint.  You'd only need to worry about vacation days or what'd happen if the culture crashed.  Of course if you were feeding both brine AND pods, it'd probably give a bit more leeway in case something happened to the culture.  Extra pods before a vacation, and extra brine if the culture goes south until you can get another going perhaps?

[DaJMasta]

If you train them to eat frozen, yes possible but maybe a little small.  Of course they have to be male/female as male/male will fight likely to the death, and while culturing pods is a viable option, the simpler and less overall effort is to get them eating frozen and then just feed that - the morsel size is much larger so they don't have to eat too many chunks to get a lot more nutrition than hours of pod grazing, and of course adding pods as a supplement would always be fine.  There is some superstition around mandarins that they have hyper exotic or extremely high food requirements and it's not as daunting as it sounds, but you do need a plan and a back up plan going in - you will have only a week or so before any resident pod population is entirely depleted, and to feed them only with added pods will likely require more than a thousand pods a day - maybe a quart harvested from a reasonable density culture every day?

If you're putting two in a tank like that, you want to be sure there's enough rock work that they can break line of site with each other fairly quickly, as the male will sometimes chase the female sometimes regardless of whether they are spawning/otherwise get along.

 

I've got a pair of blue mandarins in an E170 (20x18 or something in the display size, 45G total volume), both wild caught, added as adults, and both in there for about 9 months now.  I took about two weeks to teach eat to eat frozen right when they were added (kept in a mesh breeder box in the tank until I could confirm they would eat frozen right after it was fed to them), and I feed frozen with the pumps off every day for them to eat.  Very low visible pod population in the tank, even now with substantial phyto dosing, but both are healthy enough to spawn a couple times a week, and they seem to be able to stay away from each other when needed.

[BabyBorbonius]

Thanks everyone for the great replies! I've been really lucky to have a very professional local fish store. The owner is quite knowledgeable, I talked with him last week on keeping mandarins. He has ensured that the mandarins he is selling are already trained on frozen foods and even fed them in front of me. I would still feel safer if I had a strong backup plan with the copepod culture. So I am going to keep playing with the culture to see the feasibility in it. How many copepods I could realistically pull on a semi-daily schedule, how stable it is and just the overall effort required. I want to culture the copepods for learning sake anyway, I know its weird but I find the nerdy side of this the most fun.

The biggest issue I see is the layout of my tank, there really isn't many ways for the fish to separate from each other. It's a single tree structure and the only way to break contact is to go around the tree which isn't that effective, and I doubt the mandarins will swim to the top section of the aquarium. 

[Tamberav]

23 hours ago, BabyBorbonius said:

Thanks everyone for the great replies! I've been really lucky to have a very professional local fish store. The owner is quite knowledgeable, I talked with him last week on keeping mandarins. He has ensured that the mandarins he is selling are already trained on frozen foods and even fed them in front of me. I would still feel safer if I had a strong backup plan with the copepod culture. So I am going to keep playing with the culture to see the feasibility in it. How many copepods I could realistically pull on a semi-daily schedule, how stable it is and just the overall effort required. I want to culture the copepods for learning sake anyway, I know its weird but I find the nerdy side of this the most fun.

The biggest issue I see is the layout of my tank, there really isn't many ways for the fish to separate from each other. It's a single tree structure and the only way to break contact is to go around the tree which isn't that effective, and I doubt the mandarins will swim to the top section of the aquarium. 

 

Can you plant macro in the sand?

 

Can we get a photo of the tank? You can culture pods but they still need rock and breeding spots inside the tank.

 

You can also culture white worms. They love them and they will actually survive in saltwater a long time and wiggle/look enticing. 

[DaJMasta]

A single tree with no caves may not be great, though you probably have a bunch of potential remedies.  Small caves could be all that's needed in some cases, and make good habitat for a lot of stuff.  If you're planning on an NSA sort of aquascape design, when the stony corals grow in to fill some of the space maybe then it would be suitable, but some macroalgae could probably provided a good sight blocker as well as a little refuge for pods.
 

It's really difficult to quantify what is enough, but if you're thinking the design probably doesn't offer enough, it is worth trying to add some.  Also worth mentioning that they like to sleep in covered areas on rocks, but will sleep out in the open on a rock too.  They don't seem to prefer sand tunnels or tight spaces to sleep in, and just making sure they have some options that aren't going to be snatched up by other fish is worth considering as well.

[Paul B]

I would not put a mandarin in that small of a tank even if you used my feeder.

 

 

[Riona]

And he's the expert 🙂 Thank you for weighing in, PaulB.

[FISHnChix]

17 hours ago, Paul B said:

I would not put a mandarin in that small of a tank even if you used my feeder.