I plan to wait for 18 - 24 months before even thinking about adding the Mandarin. By then I should have 150 - 200 lbs of mature live rock plus a stable refugium. I have used J & L's online information plus other sources to come up with a list of my livestock. Luckily for me J & L has a lot of their stock from the Indo-Pacific region, same as the Mandarin - Splendidus. After a bit more thinking I will post the most likely candidates and see what people say about putting those fish and corals together in a tank along with Mandarins.

Thanks for the help.

I must commend you on your excellent planning. :biggrin:

I forgot to mention before about shrimp. They are voracious pigs. All from coral banded, peppermints or the common kept cleaners. They love to eat things in the sandbed and from the rock.

Most of us keep them in some form, and my cleaners worked over my sailfin daily. But I have seen many of the experienced reefers on the boards, moving away from cleaners, {unless they have large fish}.

Peppermints are mostly used for apitasia. Kinda stupid shrimp,IMO. :biggrin: Coral Banded have large claws for grabbing food and are fine if well fed. If not they will find food one way or the other.

Thank you. Long ago my first tank was a 20 Gl, in Winnipeg. Even knowing that the LFS happily sold me the Mandarin. We were very sad to have to take Kermit back when he started to starve. Even after trying brine shrimp and frozen shrimp. Now, I am older, wiser, and can afford the expensive books to do more research.

Does that mean I should stay away from the cleaner shrimp so the Mandarin does not have competition for it's food supply? Or will the cleaners eat frozen food before they go after the local critters?

No, you may keep cleaners if you wish. I just wanted to mention they are not the saints many believe them to be. In your set-up, there should be enough food for all. They will eat all frozen foods, like their kin folk, mysis & brine. :lol: They also eat flakes, pelletts or anything else I feed my tank and climb everywhere or on anything to get it. I have seen them in tug of war fights, with serpent stars over a piece of food.

I totaly agree, feed my tank the other night and watched my cleaner jump off a rock and tried to pull a piece of food out of the mouth of my yellow tang