[StirCrazy]

Originally Posted by mike31154

. None of the posters advising against getting one have validated their advice with personal experience. I may be wrong and if I am, apologize, but it appears some of this advice is based on second or third party information.

hmm nice asumption, but wrong. I had two of them in my tank a male and femail and one lived for 4 years the other for 5. neither ate prepared food, and contrary to Marie's that is a rarity. seeign she is so lucky I would recomend she go buy a powerball ticket

as for looking to see whats running around at nigh.. thats a waist of time, if you can see pods during the day you should figure out how to get more in your tank. it isn't the big ones they eat, but rather the babbys and different types.. but seeing pods scurring about your tank is a good indacator of the overall helth of your tanks bug population.

now alot of poeple saying go for it are not qualntifying there answers, are you listing what you had for a tank, what fish were in it? did you have 4 other fish that are direct competers for food in the tank?

ok enough of that. what can you do to improve you chances..

1, get rid of the golbies. but not a good solution for most.

2, build pod piles, very easy to do and cheep. just break down old live rock into 1-2" chunks and make big piles of this rubble behind your rocks. the size of the rocks has to be big enough that there is lots of nooks and crannys but small enough that preditory fish can not get in the structure. this gives the pods a safe haven breading ground. I had 4 of these about 2" wide, 6 inches long and 8" high behind the rock in my 94gal.

other than the food issue I find mandrins a very hardy fish and I will always have one in my tanks over 50 gal, but the tanks needs to be able to provide for them unless you have the holy grail of mandrins like Marie.

Steve