is it hard to keep a mandarin?

[fishy411]

Originally posted by spike_501
rubbish! i disagree with alot of u dudes, i have kept my mandarin for ages and he picks of the rock as u said but he eats frozen brine shrimp and mysis. as for only eating pods i disagree but you do need alot of liverock to keep them and if you do not have enough then the poor fish will starve. and its been advised to me to only buy "plump" mandarins and buying a skinney one with pinched in flanks will probably not survive
It was said that most mandarin sonly eat pods. U r lucky if u can get one to eat prepared foods. I guess u can keep them in like 30 gallon tanks if they are eating prepared foods.
also ho wlong is " ages" it takes them abou 9 months to starve

 

[ophiura]

Originally posted by spike_501
rubbish! i disagree with alot of u dudes, i have kept my mandarin for ages and he picks of the rock as u said but he eats frozen brine shrimp and mysis. as for only eating pods i disagree but you do need alot of liverock to keep them and if you do not have enough then the poor fish will starve. and its been advised to me to only buy "plump" mandarins and buying a skinney one with pinched in flanks will probably not survive
Yours does, and you are lucky. Most do not. And as mentioned, brine shrimp...let alone frozen brine shrimp, is virtually no nutritional value. You may want to soak it in selcon, zoe or similar for minerals/nutrients.
But I don't understand what you've said about "only eating pods." You said you need a lot of LR to keep them, and if you don't have it, it will starve...the implication being that if you don't have the LR, you will not have the pods, which will result in starvation. Which is basically what people are saying. So why disagree with them :notsure:

 

[goulding.c]

The pod thing is that most of these fish "Including mine" Will only eat the bugs that come out at night on the live rock. I beleave they are called copeiopods, or pods for short. As soon as I turn off the lights on my reef they crawl out like little clear cockroaches on everything, Kinda freaky! Mandarins spend there day sucking these little guys out of there hiding places and eating them. If there is not enough rock, all the pods will be eatin, and the mandarin will starve. I guess some people have been lucky enough to have a mandarin eat other foods. Mine will not even flinch at the sign of other food. While all my other fish act like sharks ripping apart what ever I through in there, the mandarin just keeps on grazing the live rock for bugs. Does that help any?
CG

 

[chris777]

There are a lot more eating frozen foods then there was in the past. A lot of the ones i have been seeing lately are eating frozen. Dont know if it is just my area or maybe somene is breeding them i dont know but to me it isnt that rare for them to not eat frozen foods around here. Mine has been eating frozen foods since i got it. Ive had it for about a year and a half now.

 

[icfish]

Originally posted by chris777
There are a lot more eating frozen foods then there was in the past.
I had two in my tank about six months ago, a male and a female. The male would not eat period, guess that's what I get for not making sure he would eat at the store before I brought him. The female would and does eat any and everthing that I trow in my tank, from flake to live brine to frozen. I have a refugium. I keeps my main tank supplied with pods, even though I don't need them, my sand, crushed coral bed is full of them, I just like the idea of overkill.