Mandarin Goby

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Deltec
Hope you have a great pod population cause that’s what they eat. Even if this one eats frozen it needs to eat a lot of times over the day very hard fish it keep that’s why they die so much
 
I have a captive raised mandarin that loves decapsulated brine shrimp eggs, so you might want to try that. The decapsulated brine shrimp eggs can go straight in the tank (non-hatching). She also seems to eat frozen baby brine and live baby brine. I’m hopeful that she will eat cyclops and mysis once she’s a little larger. She’s less than an inch right now, so I’m somewhat limited by what can fit in her mouth. I do feed a couple of times a day. Turn all the pumps off and spray a little right in front of her. At the beginning, it’s best to just leave them by themselves after you feed, but once they get used to you, it’s possible to watch to make sure they are eating. Besides pecking at the rocks, you need to watch to make sure they don’t spit it out. I usually leave pumps off for 30 minutes to an hour after feeding so she has time to eat.

I’d highly recommend culturing Tisbe pods outside the tank for them. I have two cultures going and dump a few thousand pods into the tank once a week. It’s not hard to do and supplements your tank’s pod population to insure they have enough to eat.
 
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Yes I am culturing two tisby bottles outside of the tank thinking of adding more pods to that. Every time I look at my mandarin I see him sitting in different places.
 
It's 2 parts. If it is moving all around the rockwork and pecking at the rockwork then it's eating copepods. Also can be verified, if it develops a pinched look behind it's head and a visible dent in it's belly then it is not getting enough to eat. Keeping one in a 60 gallon will prove challenging but if you stay on top of pod culturing and add them frequently to the tank you might be able to keep it going.
 
Deltec
I was not expecting this to happen but I saw him this morning being eaten by hermit crabs it could've been my sally lightfoot crab or I was doing something wrong. If I was doing something wrong what was it?
 
MombasaLionfish said:
I was not expecting this to happen but I saw him this morning being eaten by hermit crabs it could've been my sally lightfoot crab or I was doing something wrong. If I was doing something wrong what was it?
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Sorry to hear the mandarin didnt make it. I would say it's a combination of issues. First and foremost your tank is only a few months old, so it's not established enough for pod eating fish. Also you dont have much LR in there and aren't running a sump with refugium, so once the mandarin eats everything in the tank it's all over.

I thought you said this was going to be a predatory fish tank? My advice would be to come up with a stocking plan of fish that are compatible with each other and your tank, and stick with it. Give your tank another couple months to mature, maybe go pick up some more LR in the meantime. If I read it right you have 3 dominos and 2 maroon clowns in there? It's a tough environment already with that group, I've heard dominos are real bullies when they get bigger.
 
I have a fish stocking plan I was going to get either a mandarin or a sixline I chose mandarin because I had been eyeing them for awhile. Yes it is predatory I was a little worried about that but nobody seemed to be bothering him. I'm not sure what an LR is or a refugium is. Well my tank is a few month old but it seemed pretty stable with pods and still is also I'm seeding the tank with pods. I was warned against getting one originally but I really like them.
 
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MombasaLionfish said:
I have a fish stocking plan I was going to get either a mandarin or a sixline I chose mandarin because I had been eyeing them for awhile. Yes it is predatory I was a little worried about that but nobody seemed to be bothering him. I'm not sure what an LR is or a refugium is. Well my tank is a few month old but it seemed pretty stable with pods and still is also I'm seeding the tank with pods. I was warned against getting one originally but I really like them.
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LR is live rock. Refugium is a spot in a sump where you grow algae to export nutrients, and it serves as a safe haven for pods to live and reproduce.
 
MombasaLionfish said:
I was not expecting this to happen but I saw him this morning being eaten by hermit crabs it could've been my sally lightfoot crab or I was doing something wrong. If I was doing something wrong what was it?
Click to expand...

The fact remains that the 30 gallon listed minimum for a mandarinfish is WAY OFF. With a Mandarin it's less about the tank size and more about the massive amount of rockwork required to sustain a healthy breeding copepod population. It generally takes 6 months to a year to let the tank get well established with a sustainable large pod population to provide food for the mandarin. If you don't have that then you basically need to be there to feed the mandarin near constantly on a daily basis to ensure it's fed as they can consume thousands of pods in a single day.

You are not alone in this. I had a Green Mandarin that adapted to frozen and I spent over $200 in pods, and other foods that it was more prone to eat and it still starved to death in 3 months. It is a fish that is notoriously difficult to keep and in many cases it's simply best left to the wild. There is another member of the forum here who didn't get any sustainable long term success with a Mandarin until she added one to a well established 120 gallon tank. The folks who have success with them in smaller tanks are basically a slave to meeting the Mandarins feeding needs (basically impossible if you go to school, work a full time job, etc.).
 
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Jesterrace said:
The fact remains that the 30 gallon listed minimum for a mandarinfish is WAY OFF. With a Mandarin it's less about the tank size and more about the massive amount of rockwork required to sustain a healthy breeding copepod population. It generally takes 6 months to a year to let the tank get well established with a sustainable large pod population to provide food for the mandarin. If you don't have that then you basically need to be there to feed the mandarin near constantly on a daily basis to ensure it's fed as they can consume thousands of pods in a single day.

You are not alone in this. I had a Green Mandarin that adapted to frozen and I spent over $200 in pods, and other foods that it was more prone to eat and it still starved to death in 3 months. It is a fish that is notoriously difficult to keep and in many cases it's simply best left to the wild. There is another member of the forum here who didn't get any sustainable long term success with a Mandarin until she added one to a well established 120 gallon tank. The folks who have success with them in smaller tanks are basically a slave to meeting the Mandarins feeding needs (basically impossible if you go to school, work a full time job, etc.).
Click to expand...
Ok I only waited four months I will wait a year next time.
 
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