# Mandarin Fish



## Firstclasscichlids (May 12, 2013)

Hello Everyone, is anyone keeping or kept Mandarin Fish? Looking for any information/advice on keeping these guys. 

Please feel free to PM me or post comments below.

Thanks in advance.


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## notclear (Nov 5, 2011)

I have a pair of green mandarin and one spotted, they all are fat and eat pellets, mysis shrmp, and fish eggs.

The key is you need an established large tank or you can get a hand on one that is already eating frozen food. Last I heard Reef Boutique had them eating frozen food for sale.


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## 12273 (Nov 3, 2012)

I want one too! But it's a big commitment to take care of one. If the LFS could show me one eating mysis or pellets if get one. But this won't be for a while. Months down the road. 

They are so beautiful and look so peaceful . 

Hopefully you get one. And if you find a reputable place that sells them let us know


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## Firstclasscichlids (May 12, 2013)

Wow, greens are one of my favourites. Is there any rule on how many of these guys can be kept in a community -- Perhaps a number of gallons per fish?
Any suggestions on tank mates?

Thanks for the insight I appreciate it.



notclear said:


> I have a pair of green mandarin and one spotted, they all are fat and eat pellets, mysis shrmp, and fish eggs.
> 
> The key is you need an established large tank or you can get a hand on one that is already eating frozen food. Last I heard Reef Boutique had them eating frozen food for sale.


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## Firstclasscichlids (May 12, 2013)

Stunning little buggers with tons of personality. I'm sure It will be an addition later on in 2014&#8230;

Thanks for the post!



aquaman1 said:


> I want one too! But it's a big commitment to take care of one. If the LFS could show me one eating mysis or pellets if get one. But this won't be for a while. Months down the road.
> 
> They are so beautiful and look so peaceful .
> 
> Hopefully you get one. And if you find a reputable place that sells them let us know


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## notclear (Nov 5, 2011)

Firstclasscichlids said:


> Wow, greens are one of my favourites. Is there any rule on how many of these guys can be kept in a community -- Perhaps a number of gallons per fish?
> Any suggestions on tank mates?
> 
> Thanks for the insight I appreciate it.


The fish is small, technically a small tank is ok. However, their diet can make it difficult to survive in a small tank due to the lack of small invertebrates unless of course you have a refugium to supply the required food for it or it eats frozen food or pellets.

So there isn't a strict rule on how many you can keep on how many gallons of water of tank.

My tank is not small and I used to have 3 green mandarin and they all eat frozen food and pellets and those roe fish eggs you can buy from Asian supermarket (these eggs are seasoned, so I rinse them before feeding). Later on I added a spotted mandarin not knowing that she will attack the green mandarin even they are in the tank for a long time and bigger than her. So one of the largest male green mandarin was killed by her and she is now chasing the other two green ones from time to time. So far still so good after 7 months.

I read an article long time ago about keeping mandarin fish in a nano tank. The author used ROE to initiate feeding on them and was successful keeping them long term. That's why I also feed them ROE and I can say they all eat them.

Most tank mates won't bother mandarin fishes as they can exude some kind of slime which will dissuade other fishes to attack them.


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## teemee (Aug 29, 2009)

They can get very aggressive with conspecifics. I suspect notclear does ok with 3 because his tank is HUGE, with more hiding spaces than you can possibly imagine. Well, look at the picture in his signature. I would consider min. 30g per fish if they are not eating frozen/pellets, and if you want multiple species, introduce them at the same time.


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## sooley19 (Jan 7, 2009)

the only problem with them is the fact that they have a strict diet if they aren't eating frozen or live food.. i have one mandarin dragonette and the thing is just growing like crazy.. i want to put a green in there as well but i don't want there to be any problems between the 2.. as for food mine doesn't eat frozen food at all.. i purchased 2 bottles of copepods 4 months before i decided i was going to get one and put them in my fuge.. i have now had the mandarin for 8 months and it is getting much bigger.. you always need to be prepared and be ready to adapt each fish you add to your tank properly.. you will pay a little bit more for one that is eating live or frozen foods of pellets so your best bet is to investigate and figure out what you want to do and what would be easier for you.. i don't have to make sure i feed enough food for my mandarin to eat as it eats the copepods that are poluting my tank


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## noy (Nov 19, 2012)

You can train them to eat brine/Mysis. there a few threads around on how to do that but most involve putting them in an acclimation box and then starting to feed live brine (they will react to live hatched brine) - then mixing in frozen brine and Mysis and eventually pellets.

here's a video of mine eating pellets


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## wtac (Mar 17, 2006)

Mandarins naturally predate upon "pods" and finding/training one to feed on "prepared" foods will help in the even that the pod population crashes or is depleted for whatever reason.

To help better your chances with an "untrained" mandarin, in the middle of the night, should you need to get up for a midnight snack or the "loo", shine a flashlight into your tank and keep a sharp eye out for pods scurrying into the darkness of the nooks and crannies. If you see tons, you're good to go. If not, then I would get some pod cultures or wait until you see "a whole lotta" pods running for darkness.

If you are keeping wrasses like 4, 6 lines and similar, they will also hunt for pods and compete with the mandarin for pods.

JM2C


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## altcharacter (Jan 10, 2011)

Somewhat on topic...nafb has the largest ones I've ever seen in stock right now. Probably 4" or so


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## Firstclasscichlids (May 12, 2013)

Thanks everyone for the great info. I look forward to keeping one of these guys later in 2014.


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## TRUONGP15 (Apr 25, 2013)

notclear said:


> I have a pair of green mandarin and one spotted, they all are fat and eat pellets, mysis shrmp, and fish eggs.
> 
> The key is you need an established large tank or you can get a hand on one that is already eating frozen food. Last I heard Reef Boutique had them eating frozen food for sale.


I agree, if you can get one mandarin eating frozen or pellets, the others will follow. I started off with a scooter blenny actually .. had it eating mysis then i added a psychedelic mandarin and at the beginning it did starve itself for a while but after getting used to the environment and some spot feeding, it started eating frozen and get nice and fat. Since then i added another mandarin pair and like I thought they actually followed the leader and eat mysis along with the other fish. Just make sure that you use something to target feed them because they usually stay on the bottom of the tank and won't be able to compete with tank mates when it comes lunch time!


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## Dax (Sep 29, 2010)

Even if you get a trained one, you need to be careful with tank mates. If you have EVEN ONE faster fish that will compete with it, it will not make it long term. Wrasses and gobies are out.


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