Mandarin dragonets
 

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!

get the LFS to drop some food in the tank see if he goes for it.

You could learn it to eat frozen shrimps, but it is hard and once it learned still you should always turn off your powerheads and spot feed it because they are really slow.

"Samw" has one in his 40 gallon tank,it is doing great and he dont feed frozen food his tank! you could ask him.

I have bought a few of them that didnt eat prepared food and weaned them onto prep in QT, once thats done there the same as any other fish... If you do not attempt this and try to sustain them on pods they are far harder to maintain.

its one fish i always take a good look at how fat it is before i buy it, some look so thin i stay away, pick a fat one!

As far as frozen foods go, I have had the best luck using Hikari frozen mysis while working with mandarins. It is quite a bit smaller than PE mysis and more substantial than frozen pods/rotifers. It is getting harder and harder to find however. Might have to shop around for it.

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.

Good idea, i will give that a try!

Thanks for the advice everyone! I will go and take a look at him tomorrow and try and find some of the food you have been talking about! Thanks!

I have two and do not train them. I have pods in the refugium. They are both fat and one of them goes nuts with NLS pellets!

I feed my tanks with mysis shrimps, flakes, roe, NLS pellets, and nori.

Very, very unlikely to get a feeding response in the LFS. It can take a ling time to get them eating.

I have a mandarin , alone, in a twenty. She is eating I am sure as she is fat. The tank has no competition so any pods are hers. I also use a HOB fuge. O drop in NLS finicky pellets and although I have yet to actually see her consume them, she definitely gets excited when pellets float around c

Good luck. Do more research and choose wisely.

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

+1 ^^^

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!

If you're really wanting a Mandarin, see if a LFS in your area has access to ORA's captive bred dragonets. They're all supposed to be frozen or pellet trained, I believe.

Link here