Keeping a mandarin

[garick]

You could grow your own. Get yourself a little 10 gallon tank with a filter. I don't think they need lighting. Then place an order of pods in it and let them spawn. Feed them and hook it up like a refuge that will randomly wash them out into your main tank.
However most people say that a mandrine requires at least about 100 gal per fish to successfully feed them.

 

[small triggers]

Garick, it more of how much live rock there is and if there is a good place for the copepods to spawn in saftey and whom else in the tank will eat them..100 lbs of Live Rock is sufficent to sustain the copepods breeding ground...they dont rely on water quantity...(Quality yes,,,,)

 

[fretfreak13]

Do you plan on trying to train your mandarin onto frozen? I have a 29 that I'm planning to put one in (though I'm looking into culturing pods in a 10 gal like Garick said) but I'm definetly going to at least try to train onto frozen.
Check this out.

 

[fretfreak13]

lol, just noticed the last sentance in that post too. xD You JUST said that.

 

[bms]

Originally Posted by Fretfreak13
http:///forum/post/3189929
Do you plan on trying to train your mandarin onto frozen? I have a 29 that I'm planning to put one in (though I'm looking into culturing pods in a 10 gal like Garick said) but I'm definetly going to at least try to train onto frozen.
Check this out.
thanks for the website fretfreak. lots of good info. i would like to do that but i dont know if i can. i have already added the mandarin to my 100 gallon tank and i would have to catch him without dismantling or killing anything in the tank. if i can catch him easily i might go buy one of those $5 breeder nets and try it out. i think it would be damn near impossible to get him to eat frozen with 6 other fish in there, 4 of which are voracious eaters and love frozen food. i may give it a shot at catching him. he seems to be a slow and graceful swimming fish but im sure he can dart and i know he can hide in the smallest of places..il see how it goes and post my results.

 

[bms]

well i gave catching him a shot but failed miserably. i even managed to knock my candy cane coral off the ledge and into a crevice which was really really hard to get him out of without damaging his tissues. he IS doing great so far though. he is very personable and loves to hang out perched on the ledges in front of the glass and he roams around the tank picking copepods off the rocks. he even ate some off the glass which i thought was pretty cool. ive never seen a fish do that before. and my randalli shrimpgoby is finally warming up to his new tankmates. its been like 3 or 4 weeks since he has been in there, 2 of which i thought he was dead. he still stays hidden down in his own little cove, peeking out to see what everyone else is doing most of the day but will come out during feeding time.