Thanks so much for the vote of confidence! I will go for it! And this is a side note, but your profile picture is a mandarin, and that is probably my favorite saltwater fish out there. Do you have one or are you a mandarin goby hopeful like me?
To be honest. If you want to start small. A 40B(Breeder) tank is the best. It has length and width that can hold a lot of fish in your 10g to 65g range. There is a gap between 75g-120g where the fish that would be okay for a 120g some people try to put in a tank from a 75g-120g.
Clowns are in that 10g-75g. Personally I would not put a clown in less than a 20g.
I have had a spotted mandarin that ate frozens when I bought it from the LFS. Never had to worry about pods. Fed it 3x a day. Yes they NEED to eat that many times in a day. It doesn't have to be a ton of food. Just they have fast metabolism and need to have something in them.
As for the green or red mandarin. I completely understand your want for this fish. It was my goal fish and most wanted one. Problem is I didn't like the info out there. A lot of it did not add up.
The green or red dragonet and red or red ruby scooter dragonet are a 100% do not ever expect them ever to eat frozen food kind of fish. So you have to have a pod species (tigger pods I highly recommend)growing in a separate tank and baby brine shrimp hatcheries. This will get you by for feeding these kinds of dragonets. I would not put a fish like these dragonets in a tank any less than a 30g. Once again a 40B is perfect. This will give you plenty of room from front to back 18" and side to side 36". This makes it great for aquascaping and cleaning. The height is great at 16" so you do not have to reach to far down into the tank.
Getting back to the green mandarin. Yes I have one of those now, because I lost my spotted mandarin after my 40B cracked due to it not being level causing a stress fracture. So I did a ton of research and figured out on my own how to keep one. Tigger pods and baby brine shrimp. This is the gods honest truth. My two mandarins are the only 2 mandarins I have ever seen in person the past 2 years of being in the hobby that did not show a skeletal line that runs down the middle of their body. They are and were properly fed. Checkout the Videography Forum. I have been doing videos on Tigger pods using a 2 5g tanks. Checkout my videos on YouTube 40B Knasty. It will show you how to not spend $20 a week for 2,000 Tigger pods. Which will add up to $1,040 a year, but it will show you how to have 5,000-10,000 pods a week which is plenty of pods for a mandarin. Since they can eat between 500-1500pods a day. 7 days x 500 pods=3,500. So if you are dumping in 5k pods a week. That is 5,000 pods ÷ 7 days = 714 per day for him to eat if there is no other pod eaters in the tank. So I am above the bench mark for at least a healthy quality life for him. I am trying to get it to 10k pods per week ÷ 7days = 1,428 per day. See how it is a numbers game. Play the game right and you will have 100% success. This is the part I figured out for everyone to see with proof.
Now here is the other thing. Since I am in the 714 per day, but I also have a flame angel who loves tigger pods as well. So now it has gone down to half of that for him to eat. That is why I have the baby brine shrimp. I dump a 1000 of them in a day. So were I was down to 307 for tigger pods to feed the mandarin per day. The baby brine shrimp adds to the total up to 1,307 things for him to eat per day. Plus it feeds my corals. Win win! Here is the other win win part of doing the baby brine shrimp. He became used to eating the baby brine shrimp. He now recognizes the taste. So guess what happens next for me. He sees the frozen brine shrimp w/ spirulina floating by and becomes interested. Now the other part is I feed my tigger pods ONLY spirulina. So he knows the taste of spirulina & brine shrimp which makes the frozen version of those 2 tastes palatable. I never seeded my 65g with pods that has been running for only 5-6 months. It took only 1 months to trick him into eating frozen brine w/spirulina. 2 weeks later I mixed some mysis in with the brine to trick him into eating those as well. Here is the results.
