Mandarin dragonets

[abcha0s]

My first mandarin is by far the most expensive fish that I have ever owned. My second one cost me less than $20. Lessons learned I guess.

There are a couple of questions that you need to ask yourself.

1. If you end up with a Mandarin that you can't train, are you willing/able to sustain him on pods?

2. If you do manage to train him, you will still need to target feed him. Do you have the time for this?

I trained both my Mandarins to eat frozen food, but in the end I just left them to fend for themselves. Ive had the first one for a couple of years and the second one for a couple of months. There are more than enough pods in my tank for both of them.

- Brad

[arash53]

+1 ^^^

[windcoast reefs]

Well I decided that I am not gonna get the fish, Maybe I will wait until I have a much bigger tank that has more live rock. Thanks for all the help!

[daniella3d]

Mine eat fish roe (caplan eggs Masago) the oranges eggs that we find on sushi. They also eat live white worms (which they go nuts for) and Hikari frozen bloodworms. With this diet and the pods, they are happy and fat.

If you can find a white worms culture locally, this is your best bet to keep a madarin alive and fat. Not the type of diet that you can feed the fish entirely on but they are very rich in protein and fat so they are a good add up to their diet.

My copperband also go nuts for them, as well as my anoying foxface.

Originally Posted by windcoast reefs

Hey everybody,

I just went to my LFS and saw a mandarin dragonet. I know that they are hard to keep and have specific food requirements, but do they only copepods? If they do, i don't think i would have a large enough setup to sustain it ( 50 gallon with 20 gallon sump). Anyone have any thought? Please make this constructive!