An Interesting Article on Mandarin Fishes

[albertthiel]

I had a mandarin in a 40gal for quite a while and he was fine, but I knew when I bought him that he was eating frozen mysis. He did very well, but they really deplete the copepod population of your tank and therefore I would say aren't ideal for your tank's overall health. My mandarin was healthy, but the tank undoubtedly suffered to some extent due to his appetite. I'd strongly recommend them for large tanks only.

I have seen them kept successfully in smaller tanks than that but it is not so much a matter IMO of the size of the tank but of the Nutrition they are getting and whether they are getting enough of it ... and that can really only be done by supplemental feeding ...

Even in larger tanks a Mandarin will wipe out the Pod population in no time ...

You could of course add a Fuge and cultivate pods in there but that may only provide a marginally sufficient amount of food.

FWIW

[albertthiel]

Now I referred to the Feeder that Paul Baldassano developed, and below are three pictures (bad quality, but I took them with my phone as shots of the images that are in the Nano Reef Aquariums book).

The green piece is the top that has a little funnel into which the Nauplii are flowed, the long tube leads to the round cup you see at the bottom with the fish eating from it, and the cup is really just a round plastic short container, covered with mesh material, just large enough in size so the Naupii can get through.

It is actually amazing to watch what happens when the Nauplii are added sat the top through the funned and they slide down to the cup but are sort of trapped by the mesh, till they figure out how they can get out of it .... and guess what .... the fish are waiting for them to come out and gobble them up.

I believe Paul feeds his Mandarins and other fish that eat the real small food, 3 if not 4 times a day and because the Naupllii do not all come out at the same time of course this works really well as it keeps working like a food dispenser for quite some time. And Paul has two mandarins in his tank and they breed and breed and breed all the time. Of course he does not attempt to raise any as it would need an entirely separate set up etc ...


Hopefully the pics give an idea of how Nauplii, and other real small pods, can be fed as one can add different foods into the funnel, and if the mesh material needs to be a little wider all Paul does is use another cup as he has several of them with different mesh sizes.

Albert

I asked Paul to send me some clearer pictures of the feeder if he can ... when I get them I will make sure to post them

Albert