DINHOUSE, you say to make sure they are eating other food. That is good if you can see them before you buy them. They can and are a difficult fish to keep if people don't know how to take care of them. Now I don't believe any of us can see if the mandarines they are selling here are eating anything other than pods. That goes back to the main question about why swf.com sells them in beginner packages.
I had one in my 55 and before i put him in i had a lot of pods, they were everywhere (the tank was up at least 6 months). Well within 3 or 4 months he was so skinny and i didn't see anymore pods. I didn't get a pod tank set up before i left for christmas and when i came back he was dead. Now my parents have had one in there 110 tank for 3 or 4 yrs now. They do nothing to the tank, the sump runs out of water all the time, they only feed the fish every once in a while. Basically they shouldn't have that tank but somehow with no maintance on that tank the mandarine is still alive. Now I know that may be an exception but they do have well over 100 lbs of lr which should be supporting the mandarines habits.
Wamp, i do agree that if you know the special requirements for one they can be easy to keep but I thought i could do it in my 55 that had about 65 lbs of lr and he was like the damn terminator. I guess what i'm saying is that a lot of people don't know the requirements for them and it shows from all the post that pop up here on this board. Plus you did say the packages are for cycled tanks but a tank can cycle in any time from probably 2 weeks to 2 months but that doens't mean there will be enough pods to keep a mandarine. Most people who will buy a beginners package will probably wait until the tank cycles but i'm sure they won't wait much longer after that.
So to come to a conclusion i don't believe it is a good idea for them to include them in there packages.
Thats just My Opinion guys
