Mandarin dragonet tank size....

Have you added pods since the first two initial?

 

Yea!! I'm so glad to hear that! Congrats! What is your current regimen for keeping the mandarin? Pod additions? feeding?

 

How about just getting a captive bred mandarin and call it good? This used to be a big deal but now that they are successfully breeding them, the success rate has gone sky high. They are more expensive but...

 

Captive bred is still a hit or miss with the food thing.

 

Correct but wild caught was hit or miss as well. i have seen several mandarins that ate frozen. With this being said, the success rate is much higher with captive critters.

 

IMO these are worth reading.

http://www.3reef.com/forums/fish-month/mandarin-dragonette-fotm-may-08-a-47991.html

http://www.3reef.com/forums/tropical-fish/how-long-should-i-wait-get-mandarin-113142.html

http://www.3reef.com/forums/fish-food/mandarin-dragonet-feeding-117256.html

Captive breeding has kept us from killing more wild caught fish.:-/
Supplementing food source is essential for this fish to increase your odds of long term survival wild caught or not.
Also keep in mind most reef tanks tend to have growing corals in them decreasing the available hunting space.The larger the system the better but a well configured system is also essential.


http://www.3reef.com/forums/tropical-fish/keeping-mandarins-nanos-2-a-134633.html

 

No sir I haven't. After I had him for about a year or so I finally got him onto frozen. Everyday I would feed I would hold out some food on tongs by her and she eventually took the bait. So I probably really seek her out and feed em once or twice a week. Other than that he's just steady smackin on pods all day, I don't even have my chaeto box in the tank anymore either. She is a FATTY too.

These days I see more and more LFS that have captive bred and/or ORA mandarins, so it certainly seems like there availability has become a little more prevalent. Or maybe I just couldn't tell the difference then lol. But yeah a lot of petco's around here get ORA mandy's that eat frozen.

 

so, what do people recommend as far as getting pods going in an established system? Specifically - what to add.......

 

Well an established system should already a good amount of pods lol. But some LFS sell bottled tisbe, tigger, and whatever kind of copepods that you could add to seed with. You can order those too I'm sure. Other than that chaeto helps, and other rock piles, crevices, etc that the mandarin can't get into.

 

I just did a major cleaning and I don't think I really have a lot of pods although my tank is established....