Mandarin gobies (1 Viewer)

[merkurmaniac]

I am wondering about getting a mandarin goby at some point. I have a 34 gallon hex with a lot of rock in it. I have 80% of overflow going to a skimmer, and the other 20% or less going to a refugium area of my sump. The sump is 19 gal, and roughly 10-12 gal of it is the refugium. I have a couple of baskets with cheato in them, and 3 mangroves. I also had grape caulerpa, but it is kind of crapping out on me. Its mostly bare bottomed, but I do have some gravel. I have some hill country holey rock that I collected at my parents place. Its soaking in some saltwater. I am planning on putting it in the refugium, and then letting it fill with cheato. The outflow of the refugium flows into the skimmer area, so I might drill that baffle and have it flow into the pump return area. So....

Does this sounds like a good setup for growing pods to keep a mandarin happy ? I have been reading that the key is to get them to eat frozen foods. I would attempt that.

Who has kept these guys ?

 

[Jamie9169]

I have a 150 reef with sand, rock, etc..... I have had a mated pair of Mandarin Dragonettes in my tank for about a year and I have never been able to get them to eat any kind of frozen food at all. I put two bottles of tigger pods and two bottles of Ocean pods in my tank about a month before them and they have been fine ever since. Plump, happy, and always on the move. If you do get yours to eat frozen, or anyone else for that matter, please give me some tips on how to go about that.

 

[jdeveaux]

Honestly a 34 gallon system really isn't big enough to sustain a mandarin. Lots have tried and failed including me but a few have succeed. Those that did succeed did get them to eat prepared foods. I personally will never try again in anything smaller than 100gallons. It takes a lot of pods to sustain a mandarin.

When I tried it I was able to keep mine alive for about 2 months before it passed away and I even dosed my tank with extra pods but it just wasn't enough.

 

[merkurmaniac]

John,

That's what I was concerned with, especially after reading on reefcentral. I dodn't know if dedicating a lot of effort into getting a good refugium would be enough. Also, does the ride thru the return pump pose a problem for "food" coming out of the refugium, or are they small enough and tuff enough to survive ? i.e., is a hang on back refugium that has no pump a requirement ?

 

[jdeveaux]

Pods range in size from microscopic to a few mm but most of the are small enough to make the trip through the pump.

The problem is how much a mandarin eats in a given day and the pod population being able to reproduce fast enough to sustain them.

I read something on RC once about a guy who kept a fuge bigger than his display tank just to keep enough pods for a mandarin but the mandarin still didn't make it because the pods were content to live in the fuge.

 

[Slayer311]

One thing that has been helping with my mandarin in our 180 is stirring the cheato every few weeks. That way some of the pod make it back up top and keep him happy. Ours is pretty fat and seems happy.

 

[Llama]

I'm pretty sure I've had my mandarin since about August. She lived in my 46 bow for a month or so, then got moved into the 90 (30g fuge) with everything else. Still fat and happy. I've been watching her closely since adding a dragon goby to make sure she doesn't lose any weight.

I also wouldn't keep in a system that small unless it was temp. holding. You will constantly be adding pods and worried about it starving.

NOTE - When I picked out my mandarin I asked the guy at the store if they ate prepared foods. He tossed in some dianotchi (SP?) pellets and she happily consumed them. This is the only pellet/dry food my fish get now, even though I never witnessed the mandarin eating them again.

 

[reefling]

The only success story I saw was another marshian with a 40g breeder and a 20g tall sump. he had a green spot mandarin in that tank for a year or two. it was a chemical disaster that killed it. the fish was really small tho so there was not much to sustain. the fish got enough to survive but not enough to grow I suppose. I had a mandarin in a 92g tank with so much rock I could not reach a 3rd of the volume in that tank. I went through 3 and gave up. I will try one more when I start seeing pods all over everything again. Just make sure that if you try to not get anything else that eats pods. no 6line wrasse, algae blenny, etc.... my 6line kept pods mowed down. that is probably why I could not keep mandarins alive more than 6 days to 6 weeks.

 

[DonnieKim]

I had a mated pair of mandarins but i had a highly established 120 gal reef that was years and years old.
They have to have a constant supply of pods from an established system.

 

[incysor]

I had a mated pair of green mandarins in my 55g system for a year and a half, before I lost them when I moved. The full system was a 40g cube that housed an octopus a lawnmower blenny, and a yellowtail damsel, plumbed with the 55g reef tank, all plumbed to a standard wet/dry, with no fuge. In all of my tanks I set them up with 2lbs of liverock per gallon, which gradually worked it's way up to 3-4lbs as I added coral to the tanks. I waited until the tank was about 8-9months old and had a large pod population before I introduced the pair. I bought a live batch of pods online early on, and I periodically pulled some of them out of the wet/dry, and would feed these to the pair with a turkey baster, just to make sure they were getting enough, and to keep them from depleting the colony in the tank. It took a couple months, but they learned that the turkey baster meant easy food, and they hit on mysis and brine and bioplankton that I soaked in selcon. I also regularly/weekly turned the pumps off for an hour and added phyto to the wet/dry and each tank to maintain my pod colonies. After I lost the first pair when I moved, I knew I wanted another pair in the new system which ditched the 55g for a 75g. After the system had matured for nearly a year I started looking but didn't find another pair before I ended up leaving the hobby when I got divorced.
I think that you could manage a single mandarin of either type in your setup if it's mature, and you're planning on doing extra work to maintain and possibly supplement your pod population.

 

[CoralBeauty]

BB Pets at 1960 and Perry has some mandarins that will eat frozen food. I saw this myself, and purchased one. Love the way he looks in my tank!