mandirians
 

my firends just bought a mandirian goby does any one out here have any advice? they have a 45 gal and there are tons of copods and all that and he sseems to enjoy eating these. just wondering what else they eat what they like / dislike

A mandarin is not a goby. It is a dragonet. It is a common mistake to call them a goby however. This should help you do some information searches on line.

Which type do they have ?
Pterosynchiropus splendidus or Synchiropus picturatus ?

I am fortunate because my mandarin (Synchiropus picturatus) eats mysis, homemade food, even shrimp pellets, and had no problems feeding. Quite often, a mandarin is too far gone at the time of purchase and simply fades away nutritionally. They are continually eaters, and sleep virtually comatose, exposed and vulnerable. Fortunately, they have a toxic slime that is not palatable to some predators.

I have yet to see a fish harass my mandarin dragonet.

hrrrm it is mostly red and not green i dont know if this helps but it seems to be ok within 2 minutes of being let out of the bag it started eating copods

apparently the vast majority of them never accept any foods other than copepods. bob fenner and the WWM guys feel that in any tank smaller than 90 gallons, a mandarin will starve eventually, as it will reduce the pod population to the point that there is no reproduction going on. they say that even in a 90 gallon, it is difficult to maintain a mandarin for a significant period of time.

obviously, see if it will eat any prepared foods. think about adding a fuge for pod production. to me this isn't a "well, let's keep it and see what happens". enough people have tried to keep these and failed. i know a local who just killed two of these guys in a row, trying to keep them in a ~50 gallon tank. they eat all day, and a mind-boggling amount of food at that. another case of beauty being a dooming quality. better left to those with the resources to properly provide for them.

to reaffirm what deb said, they are neither a goby nor a blenny. there are apparently two types of dragonet, psychedelic and manderin. they are identical except in patterning. both are equality beautiful and equally difficult to keep alive.

they are thinking about gettinga 33 gallon fuge would this produce enough ? and what foods should they try? nori mysis

They should try taking it back to the store and trading it for a book.

To add to all of this there are more than two types of dragonets.

Scooter "blennies" are another type of dragonet that we get in this hobby. Starry dragonets are another(similar in appearance to the regular scooters we see).

I read a survey/study on RDO or RC, forget which, that stated that a 40g tank seems to be the cutoff for survivability in mandarins. If you had a mature tank over 40g, your likelyhood was good in keeping one alive. This assumed no other competition for the available food.

My mandarin eats 90 % pods. Every now and then it will eat the mysis that I put in the tank for my other inhabitants. Look into a refugium or pod piles if your friend wants to keep it alive. Unless they were lucky enough to find one that eats mysis on a regular basis. One in a million.

Chris

i am in agreeance here. i do not think it will survive in the long term. to me, success with an animal in this hobby means keeping it for as long as it would survive in the wild, not two or three or even five years. i would not trust a survey of typical reef aquarists to tell me how big of a tank is required to keep these guys alive. i do not think the friend is ready for a mandarin.