Mandarin Goby and Refugium

[Chaloupa]

Hey All! I would like some input from you regarding Mandarins...are they really that hard to keep? What have you done to keep yours happy and healthy etc....also does anyone have a site or place that they recommend for a DYI refugium or a place where I can get one.....Any input would be great! Thanks to all for reading!

[Rikko]

Mine is still plump after a couple of months.. He has shown zero interest in any food I can offer him, so the pods must still be in supply. There definitely weren't as many in the tank (visible at night) after a week but he's still doing really well. I'm feeding my 65 gallon (bout 80 lbs of LR) with a 10 gallon fuge/surge. I read that crushed coral as a substrate is good for generating pods... It sure seems to! I have about 1" in the fuge along with some smaller chunks of LR. It's always got lots of pods in there, and I guess it's feeding the tank enough to keep Skippy fed.

I just used a 10 gallon aquarium for my fuge, but like I said, it doubled as a surge tank so my design probably wouldn't help you all that much (unless of course you want a surge and have a canopy that can support an 80 or so lb tank). They sell HOB fuges that you can just hang on your tank, and they also include a powerhead. From what I've seen, it's a horrible ripoff for what you get but might be of value if you don't have the ability to work acrylic to build your own. All you'd really need is to make an acrylic box and some method to fasten it onto the tank. Generally you'll want water to feed in (be pumped/sucked in) on one end and exit on the other end so the fuge is like a channel.

Let us know if you're interested in building one and I'm sure you'll get more design ideas than you know what to do with.

[SeaHorse_Fanatic]

My tank "was" overrun with pods & live mysis but the mated pair of mandarins ate most of those in my 33g pretty quick. Now they seem to eat the frzn cyclopeeze when I squirt that in the tank & I keep several shrimp that spawn every week so the tank has a fresh supply of live food all the time. I also have a 5g brine shrimp tank that I use for defrost water for my fish.

My old mandarin ate mysis (especially Hikari because they're smaller) before it was too stupid to move away from a large rhodactis mushroom that closed up over the little bugger & suffocated it .

Anthony