Manderrin Fish

[Musho3210]

Well, do some research and try out a mandarin .

Basic info has already been said in this thread, but my only concern is how everyone makes it sound its easy to feed them frozen food, its quite rare actually, and it takes training, you would have to be extremely lucky to pick one up a HEALTHY one at the lfs that takes frozen food that isnt called for already.

Anyway, besides their feeding nature, they are quite easy to care for, they are hardy creatures and they have a layer of mucus around them which helps prevent external parasitic or bacterial infestations.

They need such big tanks because they need so much live rock to "graze" on, they eat pods as their 100% diet (unless you train them off of this, even then, pods make up most of their diet) and they spend all day hunting and sucking up pods. If you've ever seen a copepod, you'll know how small they are and it will give you an idea just how much they need to eat every day.

not true its not hard. it is easy, ive seen many feeding well on frozen, and they didnt have to go to a training course to learn how

you and your rules crazyy.

By training i mean they need to get used to frozen food being in the tank and being edible, not a series of hurdles and 400 meter runs. , it may take time for them to get used to frozen, and by that time they may be starving (if pod populations are not up to standard) to the point where death is inevitable. Tell me a worse way to die? The ratio of the mandarins that DONT take frozen food regularly is a lot more than the mandarins that do. Therefor the word "rare" is in there.

And i try to stay responsible for the lives i keep in my care.

i will agree you do need lots of pods...if you are that worried about it buy a pack of copepods every month it really does help. im going to say something but its me i got lucky...i have a spotted mandarin in a 40 gallon breeder with 35 maybe 40 pounds of live rock and my glass is covered in copepods and my mandarin is fat on a daily basis but i also like i said buy a pack of pods every month and i he also ate frozen foods after about a week. if you want my opinion if you got a good stack of live rock and you feel comfortable with it go for it you never know you may get one that eats frozen foods! i know a lot of people will disagree with me on this forum but like i said my opinion.

Well thats one expensive fish considering the price for a bag of a few copepods.

And i wouldnt recommend just getting a mandarins because it MIGHT take frozen food.

 

[IIITYIII]

I've read to eye them close before you buy also. If you get one that has a really sunken in belly then chances are it hasn't eaten for a long time anyway and is on the way out

yes that is a good point actually....a lot of fish stores will put them into takes with barely any copepod's so if you do buy one take a look at him make sure he looks decent and his stomach is not caved in or he doesnt look too skinny.