Canreef Aquatics Bulletin Board - Mandarin Goby-Anyone have one?

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- Marine Fish (http://www.canreef.com/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=122)

- - Mandarin Goby-Anyone have one? (http://www.canreef.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=49804)

Quote:

Originally Posted by karazy (Post 391659)

try feeding sushi roe

I read about that on MOFIB, do you know where to find this in Calgary? Something I would like to try as well.

I'd imagine you could find it at T&T (on 36th st and 16th Ave NE)

where can you get pods in Calgary? I tried at Riverfront but they were sold out and the price was out of my range to consistently buy bottles from them.

Red Coral has them on a fairly regular basis...

i have used matts method of weaning on several mandarins over the last few years it works well, except you cant get live adult brine shrimp here so i had to grow my own wich is hard work but vary worth it,

i have one male now in an 8g biocube been there for almost nine months and doing well, it was a pair but the female disapeared soon after i added the male, he loves sushi roe, brine, mysis ect but some times gos off food for a week or more for some reason? also he eats bristleworms!

make sure if your feeding frozen to use selcon or some other supplemt on the food, to increase pods you can make some "boxes" out of egg crate and fill them with plastic dish scrubbers and place them behind the LR, or place the LR in mounds with lots of small peices inside so the pods can breed there,
feed the tank with of phyto and crushed up pellets like NLS,
you can set up a 10g and grow them theres its easy, i had them growing with my brine shrimp most of the time, and try and get some isopods as well there larger and mandarins love them

ok, i am going to check my LFS and see what they are feeding this guy. He is in a FOWLR tank right now and is looking very chubby, so he is quite possibly already eating frozen. My plan to add the refugium seems to make sense as well. I am going to set my 10 gal up as a nano reef and breeding ground, sounds like i am going to need another tank now for my QT/HT. How many tanks is too many?:lol:

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheRealBigAL (Post 391690)

I have a 50 gallon display with a striped male and female dragonet. At one time I had 4 dragonets in the tank. My striped Male&Female and 2 other spotted females that I got from the the LFS because they were so skinny and I couldn't leave them:sad:. Once they had gotten nice and fat I found good homes for them (thanks seahorsefanatic). My secret is my 4.7 gallon hang on back refugium that is filled with cheato. I added about 4 bottles of tigger pods when I first put it on my tank(about 5 months ago). Now it grosses me out how many pods I have :lol:. When I trim the cheato pods are literally running up the scissors and onto my hands. IMO The #1secret to having Dragonets is pods and lots of em!!!!!!! Now my dragonets eat anything Mysis, Brine, even pellets but I have to turn off all of the flow in my tank and allow the food to fall to the sand bed. It took about 6 months for them to adjust to non live food.

Hey Al, remember when you were putting in like 2 bottles of tigger pods a week before you got your fuge?...

I have seen all of Als mandarins, they are really fat and healthy and I would definitely consider him a good resource for how to keep them successfully.
2 very happy, healthy ones in a 50 gallon tank that is not a species tank is a great accomplishment IMO.

I have had my Mandarin since Nov/07. He was one of the first fish I had bought for the 44g that came with my house. I knew nothing of fish and loved this little guy. I was very lucky he ate mysis and such back then since I had no live rock in the tank that was set up in the house. When I learned more about how tanks should be set up I bought some wonderful old live rock from a Canreef person. It was FULL of pods and my little goby is now in the 260g and is fat and healthy to this day. I have billions in my fuge now in the cheato and swap live rock back and forth to my display to keep the pods bountiful.

I was very fortunate that the LFS I bought him from had him of frozen foods since I would have lost him for sure. When you see some good old live rock come up for sale on Canreef buy some, it is so beneficial in the end. When I bring rocks back and forth to my display, the little pail has dozens of pods on the bottom.

There are two requirements.
Like many difficult fish mandarins require a seasoned tank. Has your tank going for at least 6 months?
The reason for the larger tank requirement is that your mandarin will spend the whole day doing nothing but searching for and eating the pods. A smaller tank cannot replenish the pods and the mandarin starves to death.
If you do not meet the above requirements pass on the fish until your tank is large enough and old enough to ensure success please.

I think i should be good to go as i have almost 50 lbs of well aged LR in my tank, and at night the critters are crawling everywhere. There have been no fish in the tank for the past two weeks and i am now seeing pods etc crawling around even during the day. I am going to add a refugium and swap rock back and forth in my tank. A couple of guys have mentioned buying bottles of pods to stock the fuge with, does anyone in the lower mainland sell this stuff and what exactly is it called? What is chaeto and what does it do? can you get it at J&L?