mandarin fish

aminyassien

aminyassien

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cairo Egypt
hi everybody
nice day to all

asking about how difficult is to care about a mandarin fish ?

it is said that it is hard to keep

waiting for your advice

Amin
 
Hi
it s not hard at all you just need a lot of live rock and a well matured tank(they are filter feeders);)
 
Ruan - just a correction mate - Mandarin's only live on LIVE FOOD - ie, pods (not filter feeders).

Amin - if you have a LOT of live rock, and a HUGE amount of pods, then you should safely be able to keep a mandarin. Also - please DON'T try and keep more than 1, unless you have a tank that is HUGE HUGE, or have a manderin that has been trained to feed on pellets, etc....

Else they WILL die....
 
Mandarins are beautiful fish, but they are not as pretty as you start noticing that they are starving because they finished all of the bugs in the tank.

I have only seen two mandarins in good conditions, one in a 8 year old 200 gal tank and the other in a similar size tank and fed with live copepods frecuently.

I kept one for over a year, I was new in the hobby, when it started to get too thin, I set up a tank just for him, full of live rock, and fed adult brine shrimp daily, and even in this conditions, he never gained sufficient weight and died.

There is a a misconception that you can keep a mandarin and forget about it, they are not filter feeders, they hunt for food all day long. Same thing with seahorses, the first couple of months they do OK in our tanks, but soon they start to look malnourished.
 
You need a well matured tank with a lot of live rock as mentioned. I have a male and a female and I'm lucky that they have taken to pellets. Do not expect this to happen overnight though. You do need enough natural food in your tank for them to survive.
 
jacquesb said:
Ruan - just a correction mate - Mandarin's only live on LIVE FOOD - ie, pods (not filter feeders).

Amin - if you have a LOT of live rock, and a HUGE amount of pods, then you should safely be able to keep a mandarin. Also - please DON'T try and keep more than 1, unless you have a tank that is HUGE HUGE, or have a manderin that has been trained to feed on pellets, etc....

Else they WILL die....
Click to expand...
opps my mistake

thanks
 
ronaldgv said:
Mandarins are beautiful fish, but they are not as pretty as you start noticing that they are starving because they finished all of the bugs in the tank.

I have only seen two mandarins in good conditions, one in a 8 year old 200 gal tank and the other in a similar size tank and fed with live copepods frecuently.

I kept one for over a year, I was new in the hobby, when it started to get too thin, I set up a tank just for him, full of live rock, and fed adult brine shrimp daily, and even in this conditions, he never gained sufficient weight and died.

There is a a misconception that you can keep a mandarin and forget about it, they are not filter feeders, they hunt for food all day long. Same thing with seahorses, the first couple of months they do OK in our tanks, but soon they start to look malnourished.
Click to expand...

Ronald, I had one for some time till I lost it to a power outage on my almost 3-year old tank - it came extremely thin and fattened up to bursting within weeks - I am not sure I am 100% in agreement with you here. I do agree you need a really well matured tank with lots of live rock, loads of pods and very little competition for food (wrasses etc) but 8 years?

My tank was 18 months old (with live rock from a 2 year old system) before I added my mandarin (RIP fishy soul)
 
Mandarins are difficult to keep but i have seen a few tanks in CT where they keep a breeding pair together and they doing quite well. Is this coincidence or do reefers have a higher success rate when kept in pairs?
 
I agree, I always introduce a pair of mandarins to a tank after 3 weeks.
If you feed the first part of the food chain, the rest will follow quick.
It is getting more difficult, if you got plenty of damsels or anthias in your DT.
Then you have to feed the greedy fish always to the maximum.
It also depends on the size of your tank, but above 200 litre and not overstocked with greedy fish, it is not a problem the get a pair of mandarins to spawn. Even the thin ones you bought, will pick up weight very quick.
 
LuckyFish said:
I agree, I always introduce a pair of mandarins to a tank after 3 weeks.
If you feed the first part of the food chain, the rest will follow quick.
It is getting more difficult, if you got plenty of damsels or anthias in your DT.
Then you have to feed the greedy fish always to the maximum.
It also depends on the size of your tank, but above 200 litre and not overstocked with greedy fish, it is not a problem the get a pair of mandarins to spawn. Even the thin ones you bought, will pick up weight very quick.
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Luckyfish I have to disagree to an extent...maybe more with the way you put the post. 3 Weeks ?

I am with Jacques on this, mandarins need a LOT of LIVE food, thus the need for a well matured tank with lots of pods etc. Rather not a bigginners / new tank fish
 
FransSny said:
Luckyfish I have to disagree to an extent...maybe more with the way you put the post. 3 Weeks ?

I am with Jacques on this, mandarins need a LOT of LIVE food, thus the need for a well matured tank with lots of pods etc. Rather not a bigginners / new tank fish
Click to expand...

I know, everybody disagrees. That´s why I thought, I shouldnt have posted that in the first place. The last time I did that, was here in CT. Fresh tank with natural sea water and after 3 weeks I added a female mandarin. Another few weeks later I added a male and another few weeks later, they spawned on a weekly basis.
I agree with you, it is not for beginners, because you have to add carbon sources.
But it is not a problem to add mandarins after 3 weeks and keep them healthy and to let them spawn. Rather I should keep quiet about this topic.
 
LuckyFish said:
I know, everybody disagrees. That´s why I thought, I shouldnt have posted that in the first place. The last time I did that, was here in CT. Fresh tank with natural sea water and after 3 weeks I added a female mandarin. Another few weeks later I added a male and another few weeks later, they spawned on a weekly basis.
I agree with you, it is not for beginners, because you have to add carbon sources.
But it is not a problem to add mandarins after 3 weeks and keep them healthy and to let them spawn. Rather I should keep quiet about this topic.
Click to expand...

yeah i agree with you lucky fish lol and im sure alot of experienced members can try this way but i wouldn't recommend it for beginners...for beginners make sure you have lotsa matured live rock full of pods galore.;)
 
Falcon said:
yeah i agree with you lucky fish lol and im sure alot of experienced members can try this way but i wouldn't recommend it for beginners...for beginners make sure you have lotsa matured live rock full of pods galore.;)
Click to expand...

Even for beginners, I should not be a problem, but they have to understand the influence of carbon sources, especially the dark side!

But I recommend, if anybody has got an empty nano standing around, try this to learn how to handle things for the bigger display tank. If you can handle carbon sources in a nano, you can handle it in a big tank much easier. It is so fascinating to see, what develops with adding carbon sources.
 
Let me get this clear....It is a bit confusing for me. You are saying that if you feed the bacteria with carbon sources, then the rest of tha microflora will develop faster and keep the mandarins well fed, is this right?

Sounds logical, but not sure if three weeks would be enough to sustain a mandarin pair. The use of natural seawater might be an advantage, since you are constantly adding larvae and other organisms that mandarins need to feed.

This might be an interesting topic for another discussion, I am relatively new to this forum, have you discussed this extensively in other posts?
 
When I start a new tank, I drop my future filtermedia into other peoples sump to get the first lot of bacteria settled. Natural seawater or not, the result will be more or less the same. Live rock or not, the result will be more or less the same too.
Once the system is running, rocks and gravel are in the tank, I go to my LFS and take a big bucket with me. I rinse and shake the live rock from my LFS in my bucket and throw the sediment into my DT. Now I start once off with a overdose vodka. Then I mix lactose powder (milk sugar), vodka and water. From this mix I add on a daily basis, x-amount and after a week, I add 1 ml more. After another week, I add another 1ml more from this mixture. Within the first week, the tank is full of zoo plankton. Pelagic and benthic. The more rock and the more rough gravel is in the tank, the better the chance for these critters to multiply before they get eaten up.
The use of carbon sources can be a dangerous game, if you don´t understand what´s going on in your tank after using vodka, vinegar, sugar, etc.
I believe almost everything is possible until it´s proven to be impossible.
I am not saying, you guys have to do it like I do, but it is possible to keep mandarins after 2 or 3 weeks in the new tank and let them spawn. I proved it twice!
 
i kept a mandarin for eleven months in a fifty litre nano, with fifteen kilos of liverock, a bicolour angel and softies, spses and hermits. (the top was open and he jumped one day, ) however he was fat and frisky. the tank was allowed to cycle and mature with some softies and hermies for three months before adding him. some said it was impossible to do but imo each persons set of experiences is unique and true to them and we are fortunate if we are successful. i do not know enough about carbon dosing to do it effectively so id rather not go that route but to those who do so effectively and can introduce a mandarin after three weeks good on you.
 
There is nothing I want discuss or fight about. Mandarinman proved the possibility to keep mandarins in a nano without carbon source dosing. That was my point.
I want to encourage people to write their experiences with mandarins, because as everything else in this hobby, there are to many opinions and ways to do it.
From my point of view, everybody is successful in this hobby with something special in his tank. A few do the right thing without knowing, a few do the right thing and they know exactly what they did and a other few try to do the right thing and don´t get it right at all.
Dwarf angels as an example. I never had a nipping dwarf angel and I still don´t know why. Plenty of people got problems with nipping dwarf angels. I never had problems with Banggai cardinals in Germany. I bred a lot of them. But here in SA, everything works out the wrong way with these species. No explanation for it.
Carbon sources can be a dangerous game. I had a MI break out, but I was not aware of it. I added by mistake more than double the amount of my mixture to the system, with the result I lost 450 fish in 3 days. You are never to old to learn.
 
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