Mandrin fish in nano tank?

[devinwarning]

Hi,

I have a 29 gallon nano cube tank that has been up and running 4 years and ive been looking at getting a mandrin fish but i do know they are picky eaters and given the size of my tank my many cocopods wouldnt last forever but i do have alot of rock and alot of cocopods as of now but im willing to buy live food to keep that fish just because im so in love with the colors and he would make a great addition to my peaceful tank. Im just wondering what would be the best live food, how much it costs, and how often i would need to buy it? Thank you,

 

[clownfitch]

The best long term solution to getting a mandarin is to talk to your LFS and see if you can get them to train one into eating frozen for you.

 

[devinwarning]

Ok I'm going to ask them next them I'm there. I actually had a scooter blenny I got to eat frozen brine but I lost him to a disease breakout in the tank a year ago unfortunately

 

[clownfitch]

That's too bad. Sorry to hear it. Good luck with the mandarin.

 

[devinwarning]

Thanks!

 

[Kworker]

I wouldn't do it, even if they are eating frozen. Unless you actually have a lot of experience with the fish I wouldn't try it. The only long term success i know about with them is if pods are continually added to the system which would be costly. It would also help a lot of there are no other fish that would compete for food with it.

 

[vic67]

There are some that are trained to eat pellets. Adding copepods regularly would be really expensive. GL

 

[devinwarning]

Is there a way to setup a 5 gallon I own as a cocopod breeding station

 

[fishroomlady]

there was a really good article I read the other day on here. I'm going to go find it....brb lol - ok, back - it disappeared off of my bookmarks. going to look around a bit....

http://www.tfhmagazine.com/details/articles/nano-mandarin-full-article.htm

 

[Roty]

I condition manderins to eat pellets and frozen but I sell them for 60 bucks because I garentee them for 7 days no matter what

 

[tyler1503]

I condition manderins to eat pellets and frozen but I sell them for 60 bucks because I garentee them for 7 days no matter what

Could you elaborate on this? I know ALOT of people on here would love to learn how to do this.

 

[Roty]

It's not easy takes allot of time and attention and pods

 

[Roty]

The trick is to get the manderin to except non moving objects add food

 

[GHill762]

there is a thread on nano-reef full of nano tank mandarin success stories and strategies for keeping them in nanos.. I'd recommend having a read through that. I'm not going to link it, don't know if that's allowed, but if you want a link to it shoot me a pm..