pair of spotted mandarin fish

dutchreefer8 · Apr 14, 2021

hi,
i am pretty new to reefing about 6 months in and i am currently running a red reefer 425xl, and i really want a pair of spotted mandarin fish down the road. but i dont know if my tank is big enough to support 2 mandarin fish. i have read a lot about it and a lot of people say different thing about it. is theire anyone who has experience with these fish. i know they need a lot of pods and i want to seed the tank with pods before the fish will be added but i dont know if thats enough.
i hope somebody can help me.

Philly Reefer · Apr 15, 2021

dutchreefer8 said:
hi,
i am pretty new to reefing about 6 months in and i am currently running a red reefer 425xl, and i really want a pair of spotted mandarin fish down the road. but i dont know if my tank is big enough to support 2 mandarin fish. i have read a lot about it and a lot of people say different thing about it. is theire anyone who has experience with these fish. i know they need a lot of pods and i want to seed the tank with pods before the fish will be added but i dont know if thats enough.
i hope somebody can help me.

Your tank is very big enough to support 2 mandarin for sure.

Mandarin is a small fish. 30g is the minimum for one.

I am planning to get my own mandarin. But my tank is currently 10m old and I can't get my pods population to thrive yet.

Been introducing copepods every months and I finally see some pods on my refugium but not in my DT. So I am waiting couple more months and will keep introducing pods.

I am also thinking of culturing phyto then culturing pods on separate buckets

Neros503 · Apr 15, 2021

I think that would be fine. You might be able to get a pair of captive bred mandarins that eats frozen or even some pellet food, but that's not always the case. I bought a captive bred mandarin for my biocube 29, and I've had him for a little over a month. he's doing great, but doesn't eat anything other than pods from what I now. The top tips I'd give are to have a big refugium, plenty of live rock, and a healthy, eating mandarin.

you can purchase captive bred spotted mandarins here if they ever come back in stock --> click here!