bloodworms for mandarins
 

just bought mandarin #5 and #6 for my tanks from kinged pets but the tough hurdle is i found that even with a healthy refugium supplying pods the mandarins will sooner or later cleanse out most of your pod populations ,and so for food supplement i feed them with bloodworms. just make certain the worms get snagged on your stationary algae, rocks or even on your corals. took most of a week for the new mandarins to get the hints and start dining on the worms. unfortunately i haven't found any other frozens items that my mandarins will go for.

Picked one up around 6... again... probably 15 to 20 minus mine. I spent a good 20 to 30 minutes watching them and the remainder all looked pretty chipper and were picking at the rocks minus two of them which didn't look so hot and one dead one.

If you go to the smaller tanks there is a gorgeous looking pair (mated pair by the way they were behaving) and they should be pretty obvious. Both were so nice and I'd have love to have them both (but my tank couldn't support the two) and I couldn't bring myself to split them up. If they haven't been split up, look for a male that keeps a smaller female under his fin all the time.

Thanks for the heads up on this Doug!

They can be trained with some patience. What I have heard is that the best approach is to have them in a small tank and have gentle flow during feeding so that the mysis etc. moves slowly.

I have a great female that I picked up from Oceanic Corals a few months ago. Paul had a three in his systems for a long time (one pair and one lone female) and they had already been likely eating stray Mysis. I use a long acrylic tube as a feeder to spot feed my dendros etc and she learned very quickly that food comes out of it. She comes right up to the tube when she sees it and I squirt a few mysis or spirulina brine shrimp out on the rock in front of her. I think with some patience and effort most can be trained to take frozen or even pellets.

I agree on the target feeding... they swim extremely slow, and generally won't rush out and chase after the food. but, it is possible to train them to eat frozen foods. I even heard that some are train to eat pellets.

with the 2nd mandarin I bought from king ed, I squirt some blood worm and brine shrimp during acclimating(feeding time in the main tank), and guess what, it took the blood worm.

so, it's more than possible to keep these fish even in a nano tank.

did anyone pickup the mated pair?

I would so love one of these but this miss order never seems to happen close to me :sad:

We bought one Saturday - should have enough food in the 120g, the only pod-eater in the mature tank, he's picking away at the rocks right now.



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I am looking for a pair of mandarins. I know this might seem cruel but could I put two of them in a 5.5G tank while I try and train them?

Ultimately they would go in my RSM 250 that has about 180 lbs of rock and I have 64oz of reef pods arriving on Thursday.

Also does anyone know if mandarins are particularly sensitive to higher temps, 82-84 degrees?

optimal temps for them would be 72F - 82F

Just curios but it is day 5 they have been at the lfs, aren't they pretty much goners already?

I mean this is a really hard species to bring back to health.