Saaqib_Ansari
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If I was looking to get a mandarin, how do I g o about quarantining it ? As it eats Copepoda would I have to dose it everyday with copepods?
Mandarin
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Jay Hemdal
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Mandarins are tough to quarantine. Personally, I use a long established coral propagation system with no fish to do a "observational" quarantine on them - keep them there for 45+ days before moving them to a DT.
You're correct though - in a standard QT, you'll need to supplement their diet with copepods.
Starting with a good one helps quite a bit - get a larger, full-bodied one if you can.
Jay
You're correct though - in a standard QT, you'll need to supplement their diet with copepods.
Starting with a good one helps quite a bit - get a larger, full-bodied one if you can.
Jay
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Saaqib_Ansari
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The bigger they are the more they eat ? Wouldn’t that be harder?
JoshH
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By full bodied he means fat, the fatter they are the longer they can go through QT. If you start off with a rather skinny one you're already behind the 8 ball when it comes to maintaining their diet and keeping them healthy. Whereas one that's fatter has a much better chance of surviving the time in QT with a reduced food source.
Jay Hemdal
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Full-bodied, but also the larger ones seem to import better - perhaps because they have more fat stores to get them through the supply chain. The larger ones are also more likely to feed on prepared foods due to size issues.
I've just seen SO many tiny-bodied mandarins with big heads go through LFS, they are cheap, but not sturdy. I always pay the extra and buy larger ones....they will need more copepods, but justy proportionally more, not like an order of magnitude more.
Jay
Hello. What size tank are we talking about and how old, how much live rock does it have and do you have a decent population of copepods? Mandarins are amazing fish and very easy to keep in a large, mature reef tank but almost impossible to keep otherwise. They really eat a huge amount of pods and daily dosing is really not an effective long term option
IMO, Mandarin is one of the fish that require a "Natural Aquarium System" to live. They can not live in one of these more sterile "QT and treat everything prior to put in DT" type of system.
If your philosophy is to completely eliminate ich from your system and do everything possible to do this, then you will not have much success with getting a wild caught Mandarin.
You can have your LFS MO a tank raised mandarin and put him directly into your QT without going into the LFS fish tank, and hope that this fish and the water come with it did not get contaminated by Ich during transport from the breeder to you. It is a reasonable bet that the breeder tank is free of disease.
If your philosophy is to completely eliminate ich from your system and do everything possible to do this, then you will not have much success with getting a wild caught Mandarin.
You can have your LFS MO a tank raised mandarin and put him directly into your QT without going into the LFS fish tank, and hope that this fish and the water come with it did not get contaminated by Ich during transport from the breeder to you. It is a reasonable bet that the breeder tank is free of disease.
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Saaqib_Ansari
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I have a 700Litre tank at the moment that’s fallow - I think there’s copepods in there I’ve added some few months ago but the back glass is crawling with insects (assuming they’re copepods) there’s maybe around 60kg live rock in there. It’s around 1 years old
Phil D.
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You will find that after a while the Mandarin will start to eat frozen from seeing the example of the others eating it. Mine eats frozen and is very healthy and happy. I have a Red Sea Max E-260, (total 81g).
Jay Hemdal
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So ORA is still producing mandarins? That's a great way to avoid much of the problem with mandarins! The disease issue is less, they'll eat non-living food, and you avoid the whole issue of collection with cyanide.
Jay
Yes. Contacted them and they put me in touch with a local retailer here in Canada. Retailer got 10 spotted and 10 green (or blue) mandarins in. Really happy to get one based on the reasons you noted!
Right here in Edmonton to my disbelief!! He ships a lot of them to Ontario. New Dawn Aquaculture.
ichthyogeek
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Why do people keep forgetting about the PaulB dragonet feeder....
Buy the book, go support a good foundation, and learn.
They also eat a lot more than just copepods. There was a good blog post a few years back on training dragonets onto eating frozen by starting with brine shrimp adults, then weaning them onto frozen brine, then mysis.
Buy the book, go support a good foundation, and learn.
They also eat a lot more than just copepods. There was a good blog post a few years back on training dragonets onto eating frozen by starting with brine shrimp adults, then weaning them onto frozen brine, then mysis.
