Should I get a Mandarin Dragonet?

[Hincapiej4]

dang its over 100? Would a breeder box work as well?

could try a pod hotel?

 

[K7BMG]

These threads seem to come up all the time.
Can I keep this fish or that fish.
This coral or that one.

Most of the time I think its like a individual looking for one sliver of evidence that they can use to answer the question with the answer they hope to get.

I always like here in this thread will say. Do your homework.
Look up the facts and care requirements of the critter you want.
Most of the articals searched will be very similar for the animals care.
Once that is known and understood then look at the environment the individual has to offer.
Will it meet or exceed the needs for PROPER CARE of the animal.

Yes you will find the exception to the rule where ONE person kept this or that, but whats the reality.
How long was the animal kept in a sub par environment vs a suitable environment?

Thing is we all know the answer.
We dont want to know it, or think we can beat the odds.

 

[Labora]

Yea you can use anything for a refugium but you need a pump and light.

 

[Sick_man]

These threads seem to come up all the time.
Can I keep this fish or that fish.
This coral or that one.

Most of the time I think its like a individual looking for one sliver of evidence that they can use to answer the question with the answer they hope to get.

I always like here in this thread will say. Do your homework.
Look up the facts and care requirements of the critter you want.
Most of the articals searched will be very similar for the animals care.
Once that is known and understood then look at the environment the individual has to offer.
Will it meet or exceed the needs for PROPER CARE of the animal.

Yes you will find the exception to the rule where ONE person kept this or that, but whats the reality.
How long was the animal kept in a sub par environment vs a suitable environment?

Thing is we all know the answer.
We dont want to know it, or think we can beat the odds.

jesus isnt this a place to ask questions? relax

 

[Tired]

A breeder box is nowhere near large enough. The minimum total gallons I would want to see someone trying to keep a mandarin in, if it's mostly eating pods, is on the realm of 50. Less if half the gallonage is a pure 'fuge. A breeder box or hang-on fuge provides snacks, not full meals.

Feeding a lizard only takes a few crickets a week, and crickets are cheap. How much does several hundred pods cost? You'll be adding that many a day to keep it happy, once it strips the pods out of the tank.

You could look into culturing copepods, but it's going to be more than $100 to get multiple cultures started, I'd imagine. And you want multiple cultures in case one crashes or is abnormally non-productive.

Frozen brine has very little nutrition. More if it's soaked in something. But the problem isn't the nutrition level of the food, the problem is the frequency of the meals. Mandarins don't have a stomach like we do, where they can retain a large amount of food and digest it. They're made to eat one pod at a time, very frequently, and digest accordingly. If you stuff one full of mysis, it only gets a little bit of nutrition out, and then the rest goes right through its system. Feeding a mandarin any frozen food once or twice a day won't keep it from starving, it'll just starve more slowly.

 

[Hincapiej4]

A breeder box is nowhere near large enough. The minimum total gallons I would want to see someone trying to keep a mandarin in, if it's mostly eating pods, is on the realm of 50. Less if half the gallonage is a pure 'fuge. A breeder box or hang-on fuge provides snacks, not full meals.

Feeding a lizard only takes a few crickets a week, and crickets are cheap. How much does several hundred pods cost? You'll be adding that many a day to keep it happy, once it strips the pods out of the tank.

You could look into culturing copepods, but it's going to be more than $100 to get multiple cultures started, I'd imagine. And you want multiple cultures in case one crashes or is abnormally non-productive.

Frozen brine has very little nutrition. More if it's soaked in something. But the problem isn't the nutrition level of the food, the problem is the frequency of the meals. Mandarins don't have a stomach like we do, where they can retain a large amount of food and digest it. They're made to eat one pod at a time, very frequently, and digest accordingly. If you stuff one full of mysis, it only gets a little bit of nutrition out, and then the rest goes right through its system. Feeding a mandarin any frozen food once or twice a day won't keep it from starving, it'll just starve more slowly.

He's asking about breeding pods in the breeder box.

 

[clffthmps]

I think these fish are beautiful but they are picky eaters. Would it be okay in a 20 gal if I provide a constant supply of copepods? I know someone who sells them very cheap.

Me Personally in the tank that size I wouldn’t.But if you’re willing to spend the money to keep replacing the copepods with no other fish in the tank it might be OK

 

[clffthmps]

Please keep in mind one order of copepods it’s gonna cost more than what you paid for the fish.

 

[flampton]

Could possibly be done but not advisable... You could dose your tank green with phyto and have an intake refugium, e.g a bunch of pod hotels haha.

 

[Uncle99]

The POD source for this fish MUST be “self sustaining” and alive as it is a hunter.
That usually means 50g minimum, stacked with lots of at least, 1 year old rock.
And that’s for 1.....no other exclusive POD eater in the tank.
Then, this is the easiest most resilient fish ever.

 

[mrpizzaface]

No

 

[NashobaTek]

Look at the target feeders made by people who have mandrins. They're easy to make and you can put fresh hatched brine shrimp into it everyday and it keeps the other fish from eating it.
All you need is a shallow plastic bowl with a lid, and ridgid air line tubing, a nylon sock or other fine mesh cloth like a net. But it has to have small holes to keep the brine shrimp from all coming out right away.
There are multiple videos on YouTube for mandrin target feeders.

I have 3 mandrins in my 125, they have a huge pod population to hunt, but I also feed fresh hatched brine shrimp in the target feeder. I also add bottles of pods every month to make sure the pod population stays huge.
They hunt constantly all day, the only time I haven't seen them hunt is after lights are off.

 

[NashobaTek]

Look at the target feeders made by people who have mandrins. They're easy to make and you can put fresh hatched brine shrimp into it everyday and it keeps the other fish from eating it.
All you need is a shallow plastic bowl with a lid, and ridgid air line tubing, a nylon sock or other fine mesh cloth like a net. But it has to have small holes to keep the brine shrimp from all coming out right away.
There are multiple videos on YouTube for mandrin target feeders.

I have 3 mandrins in my 125, they have a huge pod population to hunt, but I also feed fresh hatched brine shrimp in the target feeder. I also add bottles of pods every month to make sure the pod population stays huge.
They hunt constantly all day, the only time I haven't seen them hunt is after lights are off.

 

[Anthrax15]

Having worked at a LFS for 3 years and seeing a shipment of them come in every other week, I can tell you that I have seen less than 5 eating frozen well. I would hand feed them and had live Copepods delivered to the store every week. Like others have stated, a 20g tank that is new or even an established mature tank can only hold so many copepods. You will need to constantly be dosing copepods into the tank, trying dozens of frozen foods to see if it will eat, and your success rate will still be slim. I believe I read on this site, someone watched how many copepods a Mandarin eats an hour, then multiplied that by how many hours his lights were on and If I remember correctly, it was eating 800-1000 copepods a day.

If you absolutely MUST have one, get a captive bred ORA Mandarin Dragonet.

 

[Katrina71]

I personally wouldn't.

 

[PTXReef]

As some others have said, I also would not recommend it in a smaller system.

Have two mandarins, a female ~1'' and a male ~ 3''. Stocked my 95g for a year before adding them. At night, all the rocks, sand bed, and glass was covered in copepods (at least 3 different types of pods). The mandys took out the population in a matter of a month or so (saw much less copepods at night) and they didn't look very full.

The only way to sustain them while the pod population recovered was making a baby brine shrimp feeder (I add a generous amount twice a day).

I tried every frozen food you can try. The little one takes some frozen spirulina brine because I tried with live adult brine too and she took to it. But the large one only eats copepods and live BBS. Now the female looks happier with a full belly but I am still unsure that the larger male is getting enough nutrients.

 

[Fakegolfnews]

All youre gonna get is nay saying. If you want to try, try. If it turns your tank doesnt have enough pods to sustain the fish then you can buy pods to feed the fish. If it turns out thats more work or money than youre willing to spend then you can catch it and give it to someone or sell it. Lifes too short to let people on the internet talk you out of something you want to do. I say do it

 

[najer]

You can see my little rescue girl in the background and yes she is getting wide, this is in an evo 13.5 G and I have no idea if she eats food I add.
I have had her for over 6 months now, you need to have confidence in your tank and husbandry, I add pods about once a month and feed live phyto every day.
This is the refugium of my big tank, I can take a handful of this and just drop it in every so often my girl in the big tank is a little chunk of a fish but is camera shy, I did see here take pellets once.