Green Mandarin
- Thread starter KcMopar
- Start date
Although I will probably never have a SW tank I just had to read up on this little fish. I was surprised that they aren't as expensive as some of the more common tropicals. It does seem like one of the biggest problems with them is to see that they get enough to eat because they are so sluggish about getting to the food and although they are long-lived in the wild, their life span in a tank is more like 2 - 4 years because they don't get enough to eat due to their sluggishness.
That is correct on the price, there is not a huge demand because they are hard to provide for. I have one in my 10G tank thats almost 5 years old. Its really unheard of to have them in a 10G tank because there is not enough copods (pods) to support its needs to maintain life. So to help with this I have a tank dedicated to breeding pods. This tank is full of live rock that is purposely chosen to be very holey and porous. Pods are very very tiny and live in these little holes. What I do is swap out a couple/few pieces every week. I take the rocks out that he has picked clean and introduce new ones full of pods for him to catch. Normally these fish die because they starve and not because they are sluggish. Its owner needs to insure they have plenty of pods to feed on because they dont move very fast. So with this being a problem the owner needs to insure there is a thriving population of pods and a way to supplement this if the population shrinks. This newest Mandarin is in my 150G and this tank should always be able to support the mandarins needs for pods but just in case I will always keep a pod breeding tank around to be sure. These pods are also a food for other fish as well. They are kind of like tiny shrimps. They also help to scavenge the tank so they are great to have even if they are not part of the tanks food chain.
