The green mandarins and red scooter don’t fight? I’ve heard they could, which is why I haven’t gotten a scooter. I have a male green mandarin in one tank and a male spotted mandarin in another tank.My three Dragonets, and Mandarin Dragon pair a male Sycorax Dragon all eat pellets in addition to hunting pods all day. Initially they only pods but after a few months, seeing all the other fish eating pellets, they start to eat pellets too. All three are in my 40 gal QT tank and are very fat. The Mandarin Dragon pair spawn all the time.
Yeah, the spotted ones are less common for sure. I have a male green mandarin in one tank and a male spotted in another tank.The dragonet I love is by far the Spotted (S. picturatus). This girl eats pods almost all day but I believe she does eat frozen. She’s currently in a 3’x16”x1’ tank (custom made). And I do dose pods weekly.
I’ve also had a Ruby Red in the past but she jumped 3 years into the tank (I unfortunately left the lid barely off over night). That girl ate everything from pods to pellets/flake.
I personally find there regular’s to be boring because you see them so often.
I tried my male green mandarin and male spotted mandarin together. Initially, they ignored each other. Then within a couple hours, the green was chasing the spotted, so the spotted was removed. They have plenty of food. How long have they been together?
So I wouldn’t recommend broadcast feeding live (or are you feeding frozen/non-alive?) baby brine shrimp. They’ll just swim to the top of the tank toward the light. Mandarins don’t spend any time at the top of the tank or in open water. They only really spend time on surfaces. I’d recommend using Paul B’s method if you want to feed live baby brine shrimp. He designed a baby brine shrimp feeder for mandarins. I use his feeder design in my tank to feed my mandarins, and they love it.
Mine have been together for several months. Grow a lot.
I made a brine shrimp feeder but it was more trouble than it was worth. There’s too much flow in my tank for them to collect at the surface. I just have the mandarin pair and a Banggai pair in this tank so they have plenty of chance to eat if they want to.
Maybe I’ll try a red scooter blenny to see if it gets along with my green mandarin. I’ve wanted one. Fortunately, they’re not terribly expensive. I’ll see if my LFS would take it back if it fights with my mandarin.
Yeah, the feeders are a bit more work, but it guarantees my mandarin gets high nutrition food everyday. And my 3 gobies eat from it too. I don’t have pods yet, so it’s a necessity for me, even though he also eats frozen brine. The frozen brine has no nutrition, so I add selcon and garlic to it, but it still lacks protein. Just want to make sure he gets enough protein.
My tank is packed with rock to promote growth and space for copepods. The tank was covered with pods after a few months, like completely covered. I put the pair of mandarins in and about 3 weeks after about all the pods were/are gone. There’s still pods in the tank but I don’t see them hardly at all so I do stress out a bit about them getting enough food to eat. But it’s been like 6 months now and they are breeding so I just keep broadcasting food whether they eat it or not to make myself feel better.
Do you have pods? How long have you had the mandarins? Do you turn off the flow in your tank when you feed them frozen? If not, there’s almost zero chance they’re going to eat it. They’re very slow, so they can’t catch frozen food if it’s blowing around the tank. I turn off all my flow when I feed to allow the mandarins to catch some as it settles to the bottom. They’ll also slowly swim up to it, but there’s zero chance they’d catch it if I didn’t turn off the flow to feed.
There’s pods in the tank since the fish haven’t died yet. I don’t put any extras in. It’s been 142 days now that I’ve had them. They’ve been breeding for 3 months at least so they are eating something.
Maybe turn off the flow when you broadcast feed. That will help with them being able to catch the frozen food. But if it’s been 6 months, it’s probably fine.
Yeah, they’ll wipe out the pod population really quickly. That’s why I didn’t want to have to depend on pods as their food source. They’re so expensive.
I was told that similar body style mandarins might fight. That's why I don't keep greens and spotted together. My greens and red scooters are doing great together. Four of each in a 180 gallon tank.
Cool, the scooters and mandarins look like they have similar body styles to me, but it’s great that yours get along. Maybe I’ll try it.
