When am I ready for a Mandarin?

D E N I N O · Sep 17, 2020

Hey all,

I've been thinking about a Mandarin for a long time but always steered clear of them due to them being rather specialist.

About a year ago I started two outdoor 30 gallon pod cultures knowing I wanted a Mandarin. I upgraded my tank from a nano to a 50 gallon display in May.

Since then I've been dumping copepods into this tank every week which got it's first fish (4 Anthias) a few weeks back. From May until now it's stayed mostly fishless, I did add two clowns which had Brook so I ended up going fallow and I cycled it for 8 weeks before that... I also put Anthias through QT for a month which has left my pods with no predators since the tank was set up really.

As you can imagine, their populations are booming. They are everywhere on the glass, sand, rock. They are in my sump, there's a lot of them and I still have 60 gallons of pod cultures in my back yard which are doing well.

To me I "think" I'm ready for a Mandarin, but I guess I'm hoping for a second opinion first. I have two clowns and a wrasse in QT now so I'm at least a month away from buying a Mandarin and it will go through QT itself but is there a surefire way to know when a tank has enough pods to support these fish?

Thanks

boacvh · Sep 17, 2020

I would say you are probably ready. Take with grain of salt since I am relatively new, but I would say my experience with mine is pods are important but if you also get a baby brine shrimp hatchery and PaulB's feeder you can be ready anytime!

. It takes only a few additional minutes and you can have piece of mind there is plenty of food for them, always.

boacvh · Sep 17, 2020

I use this one BTW.

Brine Shrimp Hatchery Dish

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www.bulkreefsupply.com

D E N I N O · Sep 17, 2020

I did read about the feeders, they seem like an excellent idea but I'd rather have to rely on that as a supplement to pod populations rather than a main source of food.

I do (did) travel regularly before the Corona hit, I'd like to be able to leave my tank for a few days at a time. Convincing people to hatch BBS for me would be a struggle

NJDragonet · Sep 17, 2020

100% you are ready

boacvh · Sep 17, 2020

D E N I N O said:
I did read about the feeders, they seem like an excellent idea but I'd rather have to rely on that as a supplement to pod populations rather than a main source of food.

I do (did) travel regularly before the Corona hit, I'd like to be able to leave my tank for a few days at a time. Convincing people to hatch BBS for me would be a struggle

Yes sorry if misunderstood. I meant as supplement, pods sounds like you have more than enough already!

vetteguy53081 · Sep 17, 2020

When tank conditions are stable and satisfactory and you have both present and future food source for it

92Miata · Sep 17, 2020

Just buy a captive bred one. Both ORA's and Biota's will eat frozen foods. That way if they're not getting enough pods, they're still getting enough.

Jib · Sep 17, 2020

I feel like you're one of the only people I've seen recently who want's a Mandarin and can actually support one for the long term.

HockeyRooster · Sep 17, 2020

92Miata said:
Just buy a captive bred one. Both ORA's and Biota's will eat frozen foods. That way if they're not getting enough pods, they're still getting enough.

This here is great advice. Picking my ORA mandarin up tomorrow!

F i s h y · Sep 17, 2020

vetteguy53081 said:
When tank conditions are stable and satisfactory and you have both present and future food source for it

This ....

92Miata said:
Just buy a captive bred one. Both ORA's and Biota's will eat frozen foods. That way if they're not getting enough pods, they're still getting enough.

And this.
Both great peices of advice!

ScubaFish802 · Sep 17, 2020

boacvh said:
I use this one BTW.

Brine Shrimp Hatchery Dish

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www.bulkreefsupply.com

Can you use this for pods as well? very cool idea. My LFS has some reall nice mandarins. I have been stocking pods with the same idea as you from another user on R2R who breeds them, but would love to grow my own someday

CrazyCarlitos · Sep 17, 2020

As long as u have long-run food supply, I would say u r ready for mandarin

I am currently setting up a phytoplankton culture.. and little later, a copepod culture.
but I was not thinking anything close to 30 gallon container for the pods.. maybe I need to rethink it. Lol

Do u have a pic of ur copepod culture set up?
Which copepod are u using?

thx

Rickybobby · Sep 17, 2020

I had a mandarin in a 13.5. Had copepods but what’s amazing is when they eat frozen food. Hank was my fav fish. Unfortunately I didn’t practice qt and someone brought in velvet and killed everything. He loved frozen foods and I would get up at 5am before work and make sure he got two servings of frozen food a day plus what he ate in the tank

Rjmul · Sep 17, 2020

Buy an ORA one. And you're double ready

D E N I N O · Sep 17, 2020

A tank bred one is an option, I'll see if my LFS can get hold of them. I don't think it's so easy in the UK...

CrazyCarlitos said:
As long as u have long-run food supply, I would say u r ready for mandarin

I am currently setting up a phytoplankton culture.. and little later, a copepod culture.
but I was not thinking anything close to 30 gallon container for the pods.. maybe I need to rethink it. Lol

Do u have a pic of ur copepod culture set up?
Which copepod are u using?

thx

Here's a pic and video of one of them.

I don't know how well they will fair over winter so I've been over-harvesting from this culture, I use 100 litre storage boxes. There's crushed coral on the bottom, the boxes are on a sheet of 2" polystyrene to insulate from the floor. The bigger the culture the more stable it is in summer/winter. I don't heat these or aerate them but some people do.

I keep the water tinted with ferts, I also feed spirulina powder.

I have no idea on species, I just bought a few pouches from my LFS and started culturing them in a plastic tank and grew from there.

Throw old filter wool in, try and grow hair algae, they seem to love it.

ThRoewer · Sep 17, 2020

You should culture Tigriopus californicus (Tigger Pods) so you have always pods to add to the tank. You can culture them outside in half-full 5 gallon buckets and fed them with dry food like fish food flakes. I feed mine pulverized adult rat food. Having phytoplankton in the cultures is beneficial but not required. It is always best to have several cultures in case one crashes.

Below a video of my Mandarin & Pipefish QT. It's a 10 gallon tank with lots of bushy red algae (Gracilaria hayi?) that I regularly seed with Tigriopus and Artemia. There are also Amphipods and a host of other pods that came with the gravel from one of my sumps.
In this tank are:
a spawning pair of Bluestripe Pipefish (Doryrhamphus excisus)
a pair of Bullseye Mandarins (Synchiropus picturatus)
a juvenile pair of False Clownfish (Amphiprion ocellaris)
2 small to medium Marine Betta (Calloplesiops altivelis)
1 Firefish (Nemateleotris magnifica)

The male mandarin that now looks like a severely gravid female was pretty much skin and bones when I added him to this tank. The still skinny female was only added a few days before the video was taken so she had not yet fattened up.

Rickybobby · Sep 17, 2020

I added a huge amount of tigger pods a few months back they alway hid out near the back overflow and the clowns picked them off one by one and the Mandarin got nothing

D E N I N O · Sep 17, 2020

ThRoewer said:
You should culture Tigriopus californicus (Tigger Pods) so you have always pods to add to the tank. You can culture them outside in half-full 5 gallon buckets and fed them with dry food like fish food flakes. I feed mine pulverized adult rat food. Having phytoplankton in the cultures is beneficial but not required. It is always best to have several cultures in case one crashes.

Below a video of my Mandarin & Pipefish QT. It's a 10 gallon tank with lots of bushy red algae (Gracilaria hayi?) that I regularly seed with Tigriopus and Artemia. There are also Amphipods and a host of other pods that came with the gravel from one of my sumps.
In this tank are:
a spawning pair of Bluestripe Pipefish (Doryrhamphus excisus)
a pair of Bullseye Mandarins (Synchiropus picturatus)
a juvenile pair of False Clownfish (Amphiprion ocellaris)
2 small to medium Marine Betta (Calloplesiops altivelis)
1 Firefish (Nemateleotris magnifica)

The male mandarin that now looks like a severely gravid female was pretty much skin and bones when I added him to this tank. The still skinny female was only added a few days before the video was taken so she had not yet fattened up.

I think they might be tiger pods I'm culturing but I'm not 100% sure.

Your QT tank looks great, I'll be creating something similar once my QT tank is empty. I've got a bunch of algae from my frogfish system I can move over to make the fish more comfortable.

Dark_Knightt · Sep 17, 2020

D E N I N O said:
Hey all,

I've been thinking about a Mandarin for a long time but always steered clear of them due to them being rather specialist.

About a year ago I started two outdoor 30 gallon pod cultures knowing I wanted a Mandarin. I upgraded my tank from a nano to a 50 gallon display in May.

Since then I've been dumping copepods into this tank every week which got it's first fish (4 Anthias) a few weeks back. From May until now it's stayed mostly fishless, I did add two clowns which had Brook so I ended up going fallow and I cycled it for 8 weeks before that... I also put Anthias through QT for a month which has left my pods with no predators since the tank was set up really.

As you can imagine, their populations are booming. They are everywhere on the glass, sand, rock. They are in my sump, there's a lot of them and I still have 60 gallons of pod cultures in my back yard which are doing well.

To me I "think" I'm ready for a Mandarin, but I guess I'm hoping for a second opinion first. I have two clowns and a wrasse in QT now so I'm at least a month away from buying a Mandarin and it will go through QT itself but is there a surefire way to know when a tank has enough pods to support these fish?

Thanks

I would say you are definitly ready, especially with 60g of pods at the ready. I would suggest getting one that eats prepared foods, or get a baby and train it onto some prepared foods so if it ever dose run out of pods, for some reason, its always good to supplement it. Either way you are good to go. Lucky you. I have a 20g and I want one so bad but they dont do too well in 20g. I am maybe gonna get a ruby red dragonet cuz theyre smaller and can eat prepared foods easier.