New Mandarin Dragonets

Roots

Member
I have been wanting A Mandarin Dragonet since I first got into the hobby a year ago. I have tried to be responsible as an aquarist and not purchase any fish that I didn't feel I was ready to or equipped to care for. I opted to wait and not put one into my first Nano Reef tank since it was freshly started and not mature. I quickly moved up to a 60 gal. Reef, which some of you have seen in my Tank Chronicle Thread. It's doing well, it's several years established and has a healthy refugium as well. So I decided I was ready for Mandarins. I have decided to get a male/female pair of them. It's been pretty epic trying to locate a pair anywhere locally, or even a female for that matter. I can not find a female Mandarin anywhere locally. I drove over 150 miles today looking for a female mandarin. I had 2 stores tell me they had females only to arrive and find males. So finally at the last store I went to, they were supposed to have female. I arrived and the guy was very apologetic as he informed me that he had been mistaken and that he actually had a male... :smack: Since he was mistaken he offered me a discount on the Male that he had and said he would hand select me a healthy female from the wholesaler when he goes there on Monday, and deliver it to me at home! I live over 50 miles from his store! Pretty cool of the guy. So I will post pics of the new Male later and of the female when she comes in later on in the week, probably around Thursday.

It was a SUPER EPIC MISSION that was only partially successful, at least in the immediate time frame. But I now have a Mandarin and he sure is pretty. Ohh and the guy says he has been eating frozen Mysis without any problems, so hopefully that is true for me now that I have him home. He will be staying in the QT tank for a few weeks and it will make things a lot easier if he will accept frozen foods. :smoking:
 

Roots

Member
Now that is customer service!
Yeah, I was going to continue on my Epic Mission until I found what I was after in stock somewhere, but since the guy seemed sincerely sorry for having mistaken the male for a female I decided to take him up on his offer to pick me up a female. My LFS guy in my town is a great guy and a friend of mine, but he almost always gets his fish shipped to the store, so he's not picking the fish himself and therefore he tends to be at the mercy of his suppliers. He gets Mandarins regularly, but quite often they are not the fattest healthiest specimens. Plus he said he can't request specific sexes from his supplier when he gets them shipped. So far the male seems lively and healthy. I'm acclimating him now for introduction to the QT.

congrats on the mandarin! they are a lot of fun to watch...
Thank you sir, these fish are captivating and have such likable personalities. They are little characters.
 

BLADEYAMAHA

Well-Known Member
Man, hope that works out for you, hope they eat well for you, all to all often they starve to death, I'm afraid to try one even with my copepod population out of control, I don't know if it would stay that way.:)
 

MLKsreef

Member
Good luck with your new Mandarin. I love them, hey are beautiful. I was not succesful even with a well established tank.
 

dmatt88

Has been struck by the ban stick
They r awesome fish to behold. I simply never see mine. They hide.

..........tequilla is not my friend anymore
 

Roots

Member
I intend to do my best to keep Him and his eventual mate healthy and happy. I will be buying additional Live Pods to add to the current Pod population so that it doesn't get depleted to the point of them lacking food. I'm going to try and get them eating some prepared foods like Frozen Mysis and Brine as well as pellets maybe. If not I will just be buying a LOT of pods. He looks a little bit thin to me, but then again he's been halfway around the world before ending up in my aquarium.

I haven't offered him any food yet. I was allowing him to get comfortable in the QT. When do you think I should try feeding him? Should I wait until I see him out and about? I did pull some Caulerpa out of the refugium hoping to add a few pods to the QT that he might much on in the meantime. :smoking:
 

StirCrayzy

Well-Known Member
Never too early to try feeding.
i wouldve insisted on seeing him eat before buying.
Good luck they are awesome fish.
 

Haaileybop

Member
I never could get mine to eat anything besides the pods. I just throw in a bag of pods once a month in my fuge just in case. I know what you mean it is almost impossible to find a female. I have been checking for months. Good luck and post pictures!

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2
 

Roots

Member
Never too early to try feeding.
i wouldve insisted on seeing him eat before buying.
Good luck they are awesome fish.
Actually I did see him eat some pods, so at least I know he WILL eat something. If I can only ever get him to eat pods, then I will just buy a lot of pods. I'm going to have some time to see if he will eat the Mysis and try and train him to become accustomed to seeing me approach the tank and put the feeder into the tank and hopefully associate that with food. I might mixing some mysis into the pods and add them at the same time. Maybe then he will eat a pod, and maybe just eat a mysis too if it's mixed in with live pods.

Here he is as I was drip acclimating him for introduction into the QT.
roots-albums-new-fish-picture23730-male-green-mandarin-dragonet.jpg


roots-albums-new-fish-picture23732-male-green-mandarin-dragonet.jpg
 

sk8rdn

Has been struck by the ban stick
He does look skinny... Hopefully you get him to fatten up real well...

Ironically, I have a female that was shipped from Live Aquaria and am having issues getting her a BF... Lol.


...Moving On, Moving On...
 

Roots

Member

IMG_1697.jpg


Thanks for the link to that info. I'm really impressed with how well that feeding station fattened up that little Mandarin.

I NEED one of those for mine, like NOW. SO I will be attempting to build one for myself. By looking at the pics and reading the description, it looks fairly easy to construct a reasonable facsimile. Let me see if you all agree. I need a shallow dish of some kind with a lid that can be cut out in the middle. I need some kind of screen mesh to cover the dish with, then I put the cut out lid over the dish and screen mesh. A piece of tubing and a tiny funnel attached to the side of the dish that is long enough to reach the surface allows it to be filled from the top of the tank? Sound about right? This would work with Pods too depending on how fine the screen mesh covering the dish is right? I am gonna try this out and hopefully I have success with it, I know my Mandarin is skinny.

I saw him pick at a couple of the Mysis Shrimp I put in the QT but not devouring them yet. He did eat some pods from the Caulerpa that I added from my refugium. For some reason though most of my pods are quite tiny. There aren't many of the larger pods in my refugium. There used to be more large pods in my system. Perhaps since I recently added all my fish back into the DT after treatment in the HT/QT the population of larger pods has been depleted and hasn't had a chance to rebuild yet? I am gonna go get some Live Pods later today and add some to the refugium to reseed it.
 

Roots

Member
Welllll.... SO much for customer service! The guy that promised to hand pick me a female Mandarin completely blew me off today when I called him at the agreed upon time. He never went to the wholesaler and basically told me he didn't have a female and didn't offer to help any further finding one. What an ass. Once again I went on an epic trek driving a total of over 100 miles to once again come home without a female Mandarin. WTF!!?? Can female Mandarins really be that hard to find? Seems weird to me that every store within a 75 mile radius of me has only Males. One store I went to today had more than 10 Mandarins and they were all males! I GIVE UP! For now at least. I now have a Male Mandarin to think about. He's thin and I want to fatten him up. I may decide to sell him once I get him healthy and trained to eat frozen food. Then I can try and locate a pair again or just take my chances and have a pair shipped to me. Or I can just keep the single Mandarin if I decide to. My dreams of starting a Mandarin Breeding Project are dashed for the moment. I think I will move on to trying to set up a 20 Gal. Breeder for a pair of cool clowns.

So I drove all over the place and gathered parts to try and construct a feeding station. I got a suitable dish and some flexible air tubing. I could not find any Rigid Air Tubing anywhere! Going to look again tomorrow for that and a tiny funnel. I got some brine shrimp eggs and a brine shrimp hatchery thing that I overpaid for. I got some live pods for the mean time and some live phytoplankton to enrich the brine with after they hatch and get them "gut loaded" before I put them into the feeding station.
 

StirCrayzy

Well-Known Member
Rigid tubing sometime comes in an airstone kit for undergravel filters.
All my LFS have a stock of undergravel tubes and rigid air tube. SOME hardware stores could also have it.
 
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