Originally Posted by
Firedog
I believe the thread was about the cleaner harassing the mandarin, not about keeping a mandarin.
Must people always change the topic if they have nothing to flame about?
And now to add my two cents on keeping a mandarin: A refuge helps, most seem to think an upstream refuge is better since a return pump will possibly kill any pods it might return to the main tank. Some people believe this is over stated. If you don't have a refuge then some chaetomorpha or filter floss in the tank will provide a refuge for the pods to breed in. Supplemental pods or frozen (or live if you can get them) mysis would also help.
As for the cleaner, in time he may leave the mandarin alone, but that may not be soon enough. Might be best to quarantine the mandarin for a while.
And I as well as other posters were trying to figure out why the shrimp may be trying to clean a mandrin, and the possiblity it may have some parasites that could cause him to get parasites (lack of food, stress etc) No one was trying to flame this poster, who may not even know about the needs of a mandrin, sure wish I had these boards to tell me about them back when I got my first one and tried keeping it in a 60 gal tank with 50 lbs of rock and no fuge
Get off your high horse and let us also try to help the poster, we may know what we are talking about
Now to answer the posters question alittle further.......... Most times cleaner shrimp don't try cleaning mandrins because of their slime coat, so it is unusual for a mandrin to get cleaned, but not unheard of. If your shrimp harrassess the mandrin enough to really stress him out, you may have a problem and have to remove one or the other. I once had a cleaner shrimp constantly jumping on a bi color blenny who wanted no parts of cleaning. His colors started fading and he started hiding. I solved the problem by getting a larger tank and afew fish who liked being cleaned to keep the shrimp busy, and it worked.
Just sharing what little wisdom I have...
