I applaud kevin at biota for captive breeding and he's a really nice guy. Got the pleasure to talk to him at reefapalooza. I think people are misunderstanding that captive bred and eating prepared foods is all the animal needs. It's still a mandarin, they need more than prepared foods to sustain them and more often than most people feed there tanks. It's great that they eat prepared foods but that alone won't sustain them. We've kept our mandarin going on 3 years now, or just over, and he will eat pellets, shred chunks of LRS like a pitbull but pods still have to be added every few months. I can literally see him all the time picking at rocks. I think it's a good idea to understand a healthy pod population is needed even if buying captive bred mandarins and successfully keeping them thriving long term. Ours was not purchased captive bred and to be honest I don't think I'd purchase another but that's just me. He's one of my favorite fish though.
