Mandarin Goby in a 28g nanocube

I use to have a Mandarin and it was very healthy but it also ate frozen food. Word of advice, they are jumpers. They won't look for the holes like some fish, but they can surprise you by jumping several inches out of the water. I was about an hour too late to save my guy .

I've been looking for another mandarin but I would never buy one that does not eat frozen food and they are rare to find. Be very cautious when buying one, if you see one in the LFS ask a lot of questions and try to see if they will attempt to feed it in front of you. I would never recommend buying one online unless its one of the ORA captive bred ones but I heard they are not very colorful.

Even with mine eating frozen food everyday, he still did quite a number to my pod population and I have a 90 gallon tank. Pods thrive in gravel more than sand, so having 5-10lbs of gravel in a corner of the tank could help spawn additional pods.

Also: I had and still have a pod farm, and on top of that I would buy a bottle of pods per month as a treat. A lot of the fish seem to like the tiny pods. Mandarins are a decent amount of work for a large tank, so a small one is only going to be harder and it is very heart breaking if they starve . You're going to be spending a lot of money on pods IMO if you don't get one that eats frozen food.

 

Simply for the fact that they have a much better chance of surviving without a huge commitment in husbandry.

 

I'm 1 year younger than you; you'd think someone who talks in such a manner such as myself would be at least in his late 20's or 30's

 

ORA mandarins are hit or miss, with missing being more than 75%. I don't think that pods are completely necessary if you feed frozen... but it is a good idea to provide natural food and to obviously use pods during the first few months of keeping one. Don't think a mandarin will take frozen the day you buy it.

 

Yeah my mandarin wouldn't eat anything frozen for the first week. I agree a mix diet of frozen shrimp and live pods is best for a mandarin.

 

yeah not very, but lets just say "more experienced reefer"

 

Mixed feelings and experiences on this thread

the only advice I would give to the OP is

try it, but only once

if it fails, accept that a mandarin is not a fish that you can accomodate in your set up
and look at other less demanding species as replacements

dont repeatedly buy Mandarins because they dont last long and assume its a problem with the fish you have been buying

I genuinely hope it works out for you Eric, should you decide to attempt it
but dont buy a second one, if the 1st one does not survive as long as you hope for

just my 2 cents

Steve

 

agreed 100% steve..im out this thread on that..

 

I think it would be a good idea to have some chaeto in a fuge and buy some live pods to get started. Keep it like that for a few months while feeding phytoplankton to keep a good population. You should always have a backup culture just in case the other one is exhausted. After establishing the pods for a long time, get a mandarin and acclimate him while letting him get used to your tank for the first night (let it rest from shipping or transportation or wherever you get it from; I'd get it at night so you don't worry about it eating and whatnot.) Then you should put it in a container with pods and mix it up with some frozen, like cyclops or maybe brine shrimp. Train the mandarin for a few weeks until it eats frozen. Then again there's no guarantee it'll happen so if it doesn't work out I'd think to have someone who'd take or buy the mandarin before you even get it. Have a buyer with an established tank, and just say to him something like "I'm going to try and train it, so if it doesn't work out in a month or so I'll give it to you for $20 or something or I'll give it to you for free."

 

I agree here. Now if you get a mandarin in 3 months of having your tank it most likely won't work out, so maybe 6-9 months would be best to just have regular fish. then move on to the more advanced.