Mandarins

Can you keep multiple mandarins in one tank.

 

yes.

 

It depends on the size of the tank,tankmates, and setup.They consume pods by the thousands .Keeping more then one male will end with a fight.
Please tell us more about your system.

 

Its a 240g with a 20 gallon fuge, the only fish i have so far are 2 green chromis, 1 pink skunk clown, a fox face, and a coral beauty. Its been running for 4 or 5 months now and I have put 3 bottles of tiger pods and one bag of pods from reef cleaners so far because I wanted to get 2 mandarins before i set up the tank. I plan on getting one more skunk clown, a couple more chromis, 4 or 5 dispar anthias, 3 or 4 bangai cardinals a couple nemos if possible because of the other clowns, maybe a few purple dartfish, six line wrasse and maybe a couple more. Any ideas for livestock would be appreciated also, I like small schools of fish. Its going to be a mixed reef with lps and sps, I want it to be animated but also keep the bio load down for the sps.

 

no ocellaris clownfish, I wouldn't add a sixline with mandarins but in that size of tank who knows.

 

It sounds like you have a pretty nice set-up, and one plenty big enough for 2 mandarins. My only concert is that the system may not be fully mature yet. I would sit infront of the tank at night with a red lens flash light and see how many pods are in your tank. A mature tank with no predators should have pods all over the place at night. Also, do the same for your refugium, heck it doesnt even have to be dark to spot pods in a refugium, I run my refugium lights 18 hours a day and at any given time I can look in there and see pods EVERYWHERE. You also want to have very porous rock for pods to hide in. I have a few pieces of low quality base rock that is little more than mined limestone with practically no holes in it. This type of rock is NOT what you want for a mature pod population as it provides nowhere for them to hide out and breed. Also, you can pile up rock rubble in the back corner of your tank to give pods a safe haven to breed in the display tank. I dont like to rely on JUST a refugium for pod breeding. As the only way for a pod to get from the refugium to the display tank is past an impeller, only to get blasted up 4 feet of tubing and blown across open water for every fish in the tank to pick at before it even gets to settle in the rock. lol.

 

If you reeeeeeally want the six line, I would add him as last fish. They tend to be pushy, violent little buggers IMO.

 

I agree with the sixline, my sixline hunts for pods every second of every day. But like 1.0 reef, I have no idea whether or not that would work with a tank that size.

 

Thats good to know about the six line, I rather have the mandarins. Why not the ocellaris clown? I have a lot of pourous rock and I have been looking in the tank at night but with a regular flashlight and I see pods all over the sand, rocks, bottom of the glass, and the fuge. 99% of the pods are white but last night i noticed there are some in the fuge that are kinda blue.

 

Clowns are fine IMO and people have given you good advice about the sixline.Most Wrasses will hunt pods and are not good Mandarin tankmates.I would be sure to add a male and female just be careful when selecting them sometimes the dorsal spine that marks a male will be broken off by rough handling of the fish.Good luck!