Can I get a green mandarin dragonet?

Cassian · Oct 30, 2019

I have kept these long term before and they would definitely need a bigger tank to keep enough live foods. These are also pretty active fish, so they would probably be fairly cramped. Your tank would need to be much more mature as well

OrionN · Oct 30, 2019

The problem with Mandarin is it is hard to train to eat non live food. Even if they eat non live food, they are very slow and deliberate in their feeding habit, thus will loose out to faster fishes.

So, the Dragon owner have to feed them in such a way that they can eat in peace and other fishes cannot clean up their food when they only get a bite or two (or none), or else they have to be in species tank, or at least tank with very slow feeders similar to them. Either that or have abundant source of natural live food for them.

Paul B. Feeding technique/feeder will work very well. However, I do not have the time or the inclination to set one up. Most days, I leave the house early when the light just come on and get back near then end of the light cycle. That is even after I extended the light cycle to 14 hrs. On the day I don't work, I rather spend the time doing maintenance and just watching my fishes and take pictures.
My fishes have to make do with Nori every morning and Flakes/Frozen Mysis in AM. 8 automated pellets feeding during the day. Occasional oyster or two on the weekend, and various treats, or anemone food on the weekend.
Mandarin Pair in my tank just have to live off the natural food that are abundant in my tank.

Leslie Tabor · Oct 30, 2019

Taby said:
My post was never meant to mislead anyone. It was meant to encourage the interested party to do research on alternative possabilities. I'm sorry your manderin refused to eat pellet's however your experience wasn't like mine. My manderin ate pellets without any problem but I didnt mention as not to sway him to jump the gun and buy. I'm simply mentioning some possibilities and attempting to kindly discourage purchasing wild or untrained manderins. Meant no harm with my post.

Oh gosh! I wasn't meaning you personally! Sorry about that, I just feel too many people are under the impression that captive bred means easier to care for. This is why ORA stopped breeding Mandarins initially. Too many people were getting upset at paying high prices for captive bred fish that kept dying. IMO we are perpetuating a problem that causes more of these little guys to die.
My point was just that being captive bred does not change their basic needs. Even if they are eating something other than pods, you still would need to be feeding them small amounts of food almost constantly.

Earl Karl · Oct 30, 2019

People need to realize captive breeding does NOT suddenly change genetic traits that has been within the species for millions of generations.

Captive breeding is not going to suddenly slow down dragonets' metabolism. That would take intense artificial selection within many, MANY generations.

Hermie · Oct 30, 2019

I wonder if a dosing pump could work with small pelletized food... something more precise than the auto feeders that just dump a bunch of food out of a hole

bluprntguy · Oct 30, 2019

I have a Biota captive bred mandarin in a 32 gallon tank with an oversized sump. Here's what I do:

I culture live food outside the tank. This includes:
1. Live Baby Brine: freshly hatching brine shrimp every two days. This is the bulk of what she eats.
2. Grindal worms: I have two separate grindal worm cultures going constantly.
3. Pods: I have three indoor pod cultures +/- 3 gallons each culturing tisbe and apocalypse pods.
I feed the tank 2-3 times a day with live baby brine shrimp, grindal worms, and decapsulated brine shrimp eggs with all the pumps off for 30 minutes so she has plenty of time to eat.
I have Paul B's mandarin feeder and fill it with live baby brine shrimp every morning so she has something to graze on during the day when I'm at work.
I have a recurring shipment from @AlgaeBarn for 5280 pods monthly. I put half of these in the tank and half in the sump.

It's a fair amount of work. Even with all the options, there are occasionally days that I forget to start the brine shrimp or they just don't hatch for some reason and I'm scrambling to feed her. Vacations require someone to watch the tank and feed it daily.

I also keep an eye on her weight and I'm prepared to either upgrade my tank or move her to someone else's tank if needed.

OrionN · Oct 30, 2019

bluprntguy said:
I have a Biota captive bred mandarin in a 32 gallon tank with an oversized sump. Here's what I do:

I culture live food outside the tank. This includes:

Live Baby Brine: freshly hatching brine shrimp every two days. This is the bulk of what she eats.

Grindal worms: I have two separate grindal worm cultures going constantly.

Pods: I have three indoor pod cultures +/- 3 gallons each culturing tisbe and apocalypse pods.

I feed the tank 2-3 times a day with live baby brine shrimp, grindal worms, and decapsulated brine shrimp eggs with all the pumps off for 30 minutes so she has plenty of time to eat.

I have Paul B's mandarin feeder and fill it with live baby brine shrimp every morning so she has something to graze on during the day when I'm at work.

I have a recurring shipment from @AlgaeBarn for 5280 pods monthly. I put half of these in the tank and half in the sump.

It's a fair amount of work. Even with all the options, there are occasionally days that I forget to start the brine shrimp or they just don't hatch for some reason and I'm scrambling to feed her. Vacations require someone to watch the tank and feed it daily.

I also keep an eye on her weight and I'm prepared to either upgrade my tank or move her to someone else's tank if needed.

This is a classic Dragon Slave.

OrionN · Oct 30, 2019

NotASpammerDude said:
I wonder if a dosing pump could work with small pelletized food... something more precise than the auto feeders that just dump a bunch of food out of a hole

Pumps only pump liquid suspension. Liquid food won't last a few hours without refrigeration and only last a few hours with refrigeration, unless we preserve it with a strong dose of preservative which will not be good for the tank's animals. They get preserved too.

William Mumford · Oct 30, 2019

Mine eats out of the water column. I was thinking to breed it to see if it would be passed down. He also crushes pods all day and I feed baby brine i made a feeder at first until i saw he could crush them anywhere.

OrionN · Oct 30, 2019

Calling all Dragon Owners:
Visit this thread so you can see other people Dragons and show off yours

Let's see those Mandarin

This is such a beautiful fish. I would love to see more picture of them. Here is mine, not really a great picture but OK. Keep them coming.

www.reef2reef.com

Leslie Tabor · Oct 30, 2019

Reef Nutrition said:
The people that are breeding mandarins in captivity aren't housing them in a natural environment (tons of rock and substrate) and they aren't feeding them live copepods all day; although, they do feed them live feed organisms when they are newly hatched because that's what they require. When they wean them off of live feeds at a young age (when they are past metamorphosis), the mandarins are then fed prepared foods which include dead copepods, mysis and pellets. If this didn't work and the mandarins starved to death, then we wouldn't see captive-bred specimens available. While captive-bred mandarins still eat live copepods in any given reef tank, they will still eat prepared foods. There are people having success with this. I'm no expert either, but this is happening in aquaculture right now. Biota aquariums breeds mandarins in captivity. Here is a video they posted last year with some comments about diet.
My comments here aren't meant to say that mandarins are easy and are for everyone: they are not. I'm just letting people know that these animals can be maintained on a non-live feed diet if you can feed them enough times a day. Since we can't feed them all day long like Biota can, we rely on live copepods and other small crustaceans to keep them happy in between prepared diet feedings.

Very happy to see a discussion about this, and all opinions and experiences matter.

They are o

Earl Karl said:
People need to realize captive breeding does NOT suddenly change genetic traits that has been within the species for millions of generations.

Captive breeding is not going to suddenly slow down dragonets' metabolism. That would take intense artificial selection within many, MANY generations.

YES!!!

Jesterrace · Oct 30, 2019

Earl Karl said:
People need to realize captive breeding does NOT suddenly change genetic traits that has been within the species for millions of generations.

Captive breeding is not going to suddenly slow down dragonets' metabolism. That would take intense artificial selection within many, MANY generations.

Agreed. Adapting to other foods is only fixing part of the problem with their demands. Mine adapted to frozen in my 36 gallon tank and even with twice a day target feedings it still wasn't enough (and the other fish would beat it to the food even when it was dropped only a couple of inches from it's mouth). When I describe a mandarin's movements to people I tell them to picture an underwater hummingbird trapped in slow motion. A mandarin takes a painfully long time to lock onto targeted food and eat it, meanwhile other fish just charge in and gobble it up. So once again going from pods to frozen is only fixing part of the problem with a Mandarin.