# Blue Mandarin



## KeMo

So after reading about Mandarin fish and getting a pod factory going in my refug I got myself One. He is eating good , eats a pod about every 2 -3 secs. 
On all the sites I found info on only one said that they are jumpers and I should cover my tank. 
So I am wondering who has them and are you running an open top tank. Dont wont poor Houdini to jump ship. I know about egg crates and what not just dont like the look but will if they are jumpers.
Cheers


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## ameekplec.

Any fish can be a jumper - on R2R there was some guy who had his frogfish jump


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## caker_chris

I think out of all the fish out there, mandarins are probably the least likely to jump. they are very calm and spend most of their time on the bottom or grazing the rock.


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## KeMo

I was thinking the same thing Chris.
Thanks


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## wtac

That's what I thought as well, a client of mine has lost 3 of them carpet surfing and his aq'm is 36" tall and Eurobraced. Going to put eggcrate on top when we go next time w/new mandarins.


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## Big Ray

wow interesting ! mine is so melow I cant imagine it jumping lol 

why do some fish jump out though ? Except some fish like arowanas, or wrasses or Salmon, I dont think the rest would jump out of water in the oceans ! specially not eels ! but they do crawl out of our tanks :S has there been any studies on this ? 
I read somewhere a while back while searching about octopus, that the octopus are so intelligent that aquarium life bores them to the point they commit suicide ! not sure if thats the case or not.

also many claim that having a light on at nights would prevent most fish from jumping or coming out ! for sure didnt work for my poor eel lol but SUM has had a black eel in his display for a while and his hasnt came out ! I simply do not know, but would be cool to find out lol

or like Ameek said, Frogfish jumping out of tank ? for sure it was not trying to catch a fly, it was going somewhere or .... 

sad, yet interesting.

edit : another example I thought of was my bangaii cardinals, I got 3 of them, 2 of them paired up, they were bullying the 3rd one ! before I could do anything the 3rd one was gone, and I found it in the overflow box! must have jumped and hit the light and down to overflow box ! lucky lol


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## KeMo

I hear ya Red. Like alot of goby's and even the Jawfish spend all their time in and around the sand bed but they are know as jumpers as well. 
I think in most cases were its a bottom dwelling fish that jump, its due to some other fish scaring/startling them or some thing with the water parameters maybe. 
I don't want to take a chance anyway. Going to get some crates tomorrow.


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## gucci17

Mandarins are by far my favourite marine fish. I hope to own a mandarin one day. The main thing that worries me is training it to take prepared foods. Any of you guys successful with that?


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## Big Ray

gucci17 said:


> Mandarins are by far my favourite marine fish. I hope to own a mandarin one day. The main thing that worries me is training it to take prepared foods. Any of you guys successful with that?


depends on the individual fish I think ... Mine just accepted frozen food after like a week of getting him, no training, one day at feeding time, it just came out and took what ever other fish didnt get to ! he is shy though ...

but I have another in my seahorse tank and wow, this guy just wont eat frozen, and I think its due to so many pods being in that tank, he has no interest in extra food.


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## gucci17

Big Ray said:


> depends on the individual fish I think ... Mine just accepted frozen food after like a week of getting him, no training, one day at feeding time, it just came out and took what ever other fish didnt get to ! he is shy though ...
> 
> but I have another in my seahorse tank and wow, this guy just wont eat frozen, and I think its due to so many pods being in that tank, he has no interest in extra food.


I guess the best thing to do is look for one that is already accepting frozen foods. Have you heard anything about the ones reefaquatica is selling?


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## Big Ray

gucci17 said:


> I guess the best thing to do is look for one that is already accepting frozen foods. Have you heard anything about the ones reefaquatica is selling?


I think those were the first ORA captive breed ones.


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## gucci17

Big Ray said:


> I think those were the first ORA captive breed ones.


Have you heard anything about pricing and how successful people are with the captive bred ones?


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## Big Ray

gucci17 said:


> Have you heard anything about pricing and how successful people are with the captive bred ones?


well just like other captive breed marine fish, most important part is to get the nutrition the fish needs to it !

mandarins eat copepods, which are high in fatty acids, contain carotenoids, color pigments and .... . the frozen food offered shold have the same proteins and ... to match the fish's health.

Ive been experimenting with feeding my captive bread seahorses for past 6 months or so, and finally got a nice mix that seems to be working (all seahorses can now hold their colors, change their color depending on mode and ... . ) and still can not say I have it figured out. but seahorses lack ability to convert proteins into color pigments, not sure if that's the case with mandarins, but I have seen mandarin fish strickly on brine shrimp frozen, and lame colors and ... .


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## KeMo

I called reefaquatica to find out about their Mandarins. They are tank raised. 
But there is a waiting list of around 15 and they are 130 dollars. You need to email him to be put on the list. 
But then there is no guarantee that they will eat frozen. After reading for about well since my last post , there are several forms and sites that all talk about training them to take frozen. They all seem to start with baby live brine , some do it in the DT while others do it in a specimen box in your DT. 
One of the main problems seem to be that mandarin fish are so slow that if you have any kinda current they cant seem to get to them. Witch I see with mine. When I feed Cyclops to the tank he perks up on a rock and seems to want some but it all just floats buy. Going to shut everything off next time. 
Also it seems you have to change from live brine to like a 2/3 live brine with frozen , then slowly add in mysis and worms. 
I am going to be trying this with my Mandarin (Houdini) 
Hey BigRed would you say a mandarin that eats a pod every 2-4 secs is getting enough food ?


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## Big Ray

KeMo said:


> I called reefaquatica to find out about their Mandarins. They are tank raised.
> But there is a waiting list of around 15 and they are 130 dollars. You need to email him to be put on the list.
> But then there is no guarantee that they will eat frozen. After reading for about well since my last post , there are several forms and sites that all talk about training them to take frozen. They all seem to start with baby live brine , some do it in the DT while others do it in a specimen box in your DT.
> One of the main problems seem to be that mandarin fish are so slow that if you have any kinda current they cant seem to get to them. Witch I see with mine. When I feed Cyclops to the tank he perks up on a rock and seems to want some but it all just floats buy. Going to shut everything off next time.
> Also it seems you have to change from live brine to like a 2/3 live brine with frozen , then slowly add in mysis and worms.
> I am going to be trying this with my Mandarin (Houdini)
> Hey BigRed would you say a mandarin that eats a pod every 2-4 secs is getting enough food ?


oh yea, I never feed without turning all pumps off, you will just waste the food. Mine waits till frozen food is on the sand or coral or rock, and then sits by it and eats it lol

regarding enough food, I have no Idea to be honest. but if he looks good, holding color and its stomach isnt pushed in, then it must be fine.


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## acer

soooo my friend got a spotted mandarin thinking he could get it to eat frozen in a not so established tank with next to no copepod population, needless to say, he failed and the mandarin is now in my tank fat and happy 1 week after I got it, and my pod population looks to be stable. I'm quite happy cause I thought he was a goner as he was quite skinny, but now he looks obese. 

when I was away at school during the week, my sister said she saw him eat up some cut up shrimp that she put in when she was feeding the hermits and peppermint, so I at least have a backup plan if my pods freakishly die out and I have to start buying pods, but hopefully that won't happen.


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## UnderTheSea

We have never had any of our mandarins jump but did have a client find their mandarin jump while feeding. Basically with any fish there is a potential for jumping.


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## marblerye

sorry to resurrect this semi-old thread but i've actually successfully trained a scooter blenny to take frozen foods (hikari brine/mysid/bloodworms) and later on got him on formula 1 small pellets. he's one of the fattest scooters i have EVER seen and quite happy too. bought him from big al's where he was nearly dead with a pinched in stomach and his spines were showing b/c of how skinny he was but after a persistent month of training he learned to eat from a tube. had him for a year now and he is gigantic!

3 months ago tried my luck with a mandarin i got from big als in north york during a sale for 19.99; got him trained to eat pellets in a week. during that time, that big al's store didn't have ANY chaeto in their refugium because they apparently 'sold' it all (stupid!) so all their mandarins/scooters were dying within a week. mine was kinda skinny and i felt he'd do a heck of a lot better in my tank than at the store and now he's pretty fat. 

both species were wild caught (obviously) so it is very much possible IF you put the time into doing it properly. an established tank with lots of LR, live sand, and refugium is still a must because they don't wait around til you throw in some pellets.. they still have a natural instinct to hunt for pods all day. that's a big mistake people are making when they have a 30g tank or smaller and think 'tank-raised mandarins' horray!


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## caker_chris

marblerye said:


> sorry to resurrect this semi-old thread but i've actually successfully trained a scooter blenny to take frozen foods (hikari brine/mysid/bloodworms) and later on got him on formula 1 small pellets. he's one of the fattest scooters i have EVER seen and quite happy too. bought him from big al's where he was nearly dead with a pinched in stomach and his spines were showing b/c of how skinny he was but after a persistent month of training he learned to eat from a tube. had him for a year now and he is gigantic!
> 
> 3 months ago tried my luck with a mandarin i got from big als in north york during a sale for 19.99; got him trained to eat pellets in a week. during that time, that big al's store didn't have ANY chaeto in their refugium because they apparently 'sold' it all (stupid!) so all their mandarins/scooters were dying within a week. mine was kinda skinny and i felt he'd do a heck of a lot better in my tank than at the store and now he's pretty fat.
> 
> both species were wild caught (obviously) so it is very much possible IF you put the time into doing it properly. an established tank with lots of LR, live sand, and refugium is still a must because they don't wait around til you throw in some pellets.. they still have a natural instinct to hunt for pods all day. that's a big mistake people are making when they have a 30g tank or smaller and think 'tank-raised mandarins' horray!


so what did you do to get them to take frozen and pellets so easily? Any tricks you can share with us?


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## conix67

gucci17 said:


> I guess the best thing to do is look for one that is already accepting frozen foods. Have you heard anything about the ones reefaquatica is selling?


Lucky for me, my mandarin eats anything, including small pellets...


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## marblerye

I know a few people who grabbed tank raised mandarins from Hubert over at reefaquatica, all of which were brought over from ORA. Currently only available are green spotted mandarin gobies (Synchiropus Picturatus) and of the ones I've seen in person, all were really tiny at no more than an inch to an inch and a half. The owners did say they were new, and have tried to get it to eat pellets but with no success. Not even frozen at this point, but if you search on YouTube there is a video ORA released where there is a whole tank full of mandarins going to town on some nutramar ova. 

Of the ones I've seen, all of them were doing well in large, healthy tanks of 75g or larger despite not being able to feed them prepared foods.


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## marblerye

caker_chris said:


> so what did you do to get them to take frozen and pellets so easily? Any tricks you can share with us?


with my scooter blenny; i brought him home all skinny from the shop and i feared for his health greatly so he went straight into my refugium. i have a setup where i have 2 refugiums; first is a seperate one that has macro-algae, live rock and live sand and is lit which feeds into a chamber in my sump where i have a second refugium with live sand and live rock only and is not lit. from there the water spills over into my return area.. so the scooter remained in the second refugium and was being fed directly from the refugium. he quickly devoured all the pods from the refugium and gain a bit of life in him for a few days. then i started growing brine shrimp and selcon mix, shut off flow and let them loose where he learned to eat them. i'd throw in one or two frozen brine but he would turn it down. did this for about 2 weeks while slowly shifting over to a dropper to feed him and he slowly realized the frozen brine (hikari) was tastier than the live brine. he also learned to identify the droppers presence as his next meal. he took to frozen brine, then threw in frozen mysis (hikari) and the first time he took a mysid shrimp he flipped out! loved it ever since, then i gave him bloodworms which he also loved. while i threw in these frozen foods, i'd drop in 1 or 2 pellets. i find dragonets are curious fish that would nibble on anything that gave off a tasty scent ONCE and then decide whether or not he would continue to keep eating it..

he didn't learn to eat pellets until 3 months in, always soaked in selcon obviously because that is the primer for which i think he links the foods to that same taste.

with the mandarin was simple; the scooter told him pellets are great! no seriously.. he did.


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## marblerye

after 3 weeks of eating frozen foods in my second refugium, i slowly switched things up by feeding him through a 3/4" tube where it would protrude out of the water and i'd shoot defrosted mysis shrimp into it. he learned to chill near that tube all the time waiting for the food to drop. all this training took about a month and the scooter gained some good meat on his body so in he went to my display. i setup a 3/4" tube from the top of the water to the bottom of a corner and he learned that was his feeding corner. i'd feed him mysis shrimp in the morning, bloodworms in the afternoon, and sometimes brine as a treat while the refugiums supplied pods to the tank. after about 3 months he took pellets so the tube went out. he isn't picky about selcon anymore either.. but prefers ocean nutrition's formula 1 small pellets.


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## Big Ray

Yea the tube method is indeed very effective. Just a note regarding selcon though ... Couple months back in search of the best enrichment product for rearing and coloring up seahorses, my first try was with selcon of course and after a couple failed trials I emailed the manufacturer regarding expiry date since I got mine from BA ... Turns out it has a life time of 6 months only ! So unless u just ordered it , it's most probably gone bad :s 

Beta glucan and dans formula from seahorse.org is pretty good but it's a bit more work.


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## Kweli

I would love a scooter blenny or a mandarin...


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## caker_chris

marblerye said:


> after 3 weeks of eating frozen foods in my second refugium, i slowly switched things up by feeding him through a 3/4" tube where it would protrude out of the water and i'd shoot defrosted mysis shrimp into it. he learned to chill near that tube all the time waiting for the food to drop. all this training took about a month and the scooter gained some good meat on his body so in he went to my display. i setup a 3/4" tube from the top of the water to the bottom of a corner and he learned that was his feeding corner. i'd feed him mysis shrimp in the morning, bloodworms in the afternoon, and sometimes brine as a treat while the refugiums supplied pods to the tank. after about 3 months he took pellets so the tube went out. he isn't picky about selcon anymore either.. but prefers ocean nutrition's formula 1 small pellets.


Thanks for the info. I should try this method with the tube. Problem is that my other fish eat the food so darn fast that I dont know if she will have a chance to have any.


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## Kweli

I plan on getting a yellow clown goby which is difficult to get to eat aswell (not as much as the mandarin)

How do you feed something like this in a QT tank without the cleanup crew that a displaytank or sump has to for leftovers?

I mean, i will try with cycopleeze/mysis/brine but the stuff is so small that it will polute the water, wont it? Especially for the first while when the fish doesnt even eat most of it?


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## KeMo

This is what I did to get mine to eat frozen. Alot of people have had good results with this method. 
Mandarins and other dragonets eat copepods and other small prey from the live rock.
If kept in a small tank there may not be enough live food to support the fish and it is common for them to get slimmer and slimmer before dying.

One option is to buy live rotifers and copepods to keep the pod population healthy.

A better option is to get the mandarin eating frozen food.

The technique I use works pretty much every time.

First select a fat healthy specimen.

Instead of adding the fish to the main tank I add the fish to a small breeding net. The type that hang or stick to the inside of the tank used for breeding freshwater livebearers.

First day feed live brineshrimp into the net. The mandarin should eat live brineshrimp but it is not very nutritional.

On the second day add live brine shrimp along with some defrosted frozen brine shrimp.
Continue this for a few days until the fish eats both the frozen artemia as well as the live stuff.
The net helps in this respect as the dead shrimp waft about on the net with the live stuff and the mandarin will soon see them both as food.

Once the fish is eating dead brine you can then phase in defrosted mysis shrimp with the brine shrimp.
Mysis is a much more nutritional food and can sustain mandarins long term.

Release the fish from the trap when it is eating dead mysis without any other food being added.

That's it. It should take 3 or 4 days but well worth it in the long run.
Good Luck


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## Kweli

Sounds like a good plan.... Are mandarins immune to ICH or any other transferable parasite?

I just had a ICH attack so im QT'ing my only fish so far, and plan on QT'ing any new ones... Your idea is great but would it work in a seperate tank? The hard part is.. my tank is exploding with pods

Where do you buy live brine in GTA?


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## KeMo

I'm dont know if they are immune but from what I have read , their very resistant to it. There skin produces a kind of slime that helps aid in it. Turns out that alot of fish like tangs and stuff that swim up higher in the reefs are more susceptible to things like ich. Were fish that crews the rocks like mandarins are better built to fight ich. I have also read that if your tank gets ich you dont need to treat that mandarin . But I may be wrong so I would check it out first.
What I found was the net thing worked. My mandarin would not eat anything that was floating buy. It had to be moving on the glass or something like a real pod. So with the net the dead ones get stuck on it and wiggle around in the current. They look alive plus they are mixed with the live @ first.
You can buy brine shrimp eggs at any LFS . They are like 5 bucks for a crap load. Here is a good video on growing them and pods that I found from Carls Aquarium. Never been to his store. He claims to QT everything for 2 weeks.
http://www.carlsaquarium.com/fishguy_videos/fishguy_videos.htm

Just scroll down to Feeding reef crew 1 & 2


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