Preamble
As you can probably guess by the title, this post pertains to mandarinfish. Ready for the controversy? I'm trying to keep a green mandarin in a ten gallon tank.
Only reason I'm posting my project is because this is MFT... I could never dream of posting this on another board. People are too nasty and their arguments are circular--they are unwilling to open their mind on the idea, and any time someone offers a researched and thought-out method, the thread degenerates into a mire.
I've done a lot of reading, planning, and writing on this, and I'm sharing everything because I believe what I'm doing advances the marine hobby, whether I succeed or fail.
I'm copying a lot from my article I posted on my site as well as my blog.
Let's begin, shall we?
Philosophy
I believe keeping a healthy, happy green mandarin goby in a ten gallon tank is possible. I also believe we will soon be seeing tank-raised and aquacultured green mandarins in the next ten years. Feeding issues will be a thing of the past, and farm-raised mandarins will eagerly accept frozen and processed foods. Nano tanks are very new to the saltwater scene, and fifteen years ago a reef aquarium under 55 gallons was absolutely unheard of. Thanks to new lighting technology and the Berlin method of natural filtration through live rock, smaller quantities of water are holding fish and corals aquarists never dreamed of keeping.
Mandarins are some of the most popular, easily available, and cheapest fish on the saltwater market. They experience the greatest mortality rate of marine fish as well. Given these two facts, and given the nature of capitalism (let alone the evolutionary advancement of the marine and reef hobby), I believe we'll be hearing a lot more stories of mandarins eating frozen and pellet food and thriving in tanks once thought impossible to sustain them.
In fact, this is already happening. Many marine hobbyists who've done their homework have reported success in keeping mandarins in nanos, and several have even weaned them onto pellet food. Unfortunately, people are often afraid to admit their success on forums. As mentioned above, keeping mandarins in anything but the traditionally accepted housing--100 gallons, 100+ pounds of live rock, a 2-year old, "mature" tank--brings out the worst in some people. For whatever reason, they will not open their minds to even the idea of success.
Now some additional thoughts:
* I will do everything in my power to provide the mandarin with the nutrition and care it needs.
* I believe experimenting with pets is good, as long as the caregiver has done his homework.
* Fish are not people. Attaching human elements onto fish or any lower animal is a fallacy. I am not "torturing" a fish for selfish or aesthetic reasons; I am advancing the hobby by trying to do what others have successfully done before.
* If my experiment fails, I am prepared to "eat" the fish and all the expenses. I will return the mandarin to the LFS, and I will probably try again with another specimen. If I fail again, I will most likely give up; however, I will never condemn someone who tries the same thing.
* I will not know if things are going swimmingly until I reach the six month mark.
The Plan
I will arrange my tank to accommodate copepods, the mandarin's main food source. Instead of a fuge or a sump I will culture the pods in a separate venue: several quart mason jars on the windowsill. I will inject the tank with fresh pods on a regular basis so the population will always stay at adequate levels.
I will be using Essential Live Feed's Oceanpods.
Each bottle contains 1000 copepods of three different species. They are nutritionally dense and provide the essential fatty acids that brine and other food often given to mandarins do not. Also, if you're able to sustain a constant population, you'll not have to worry about getting your mandarin to eat frozen or processed foods ever again!
According to Dr. Adelaide Rhodes, the creator of Oceanpods, "It is difficult to believe that something so small could have such a significant impact on the nutritional value of fish, but a good analogy is the dependence of whales on krill. Krill are just another type of marine crustacean rich in essential fatty acids, and the preferred food of many species of whale, which filter the krill out of the water by pushing them through the fine mesh of baleen found inside their mouths. Without the krill, the whales would die. Think of the size of the whale compared to the krill and you can begin to see how significant Copepods can be in the marine food web." (source link)
Please see Dr. Rhodes's site for more information.
Above is the beginning of my pod factory, which will consist of multiple quart jars, each containing a nontoxic plastic dish scrubber (the coarse type of sponge that looks like fishing net). Once the progenitor batch of pods multiply and the population takes off, I will split the culture to the second jar, and then the third, etc. I estimate in a month's time I will be able to lift a scrubber from one jar and shake out enough pods in various life stages to keep my main tank's population at sustainable levels. The decimated quart jar will then have enough time to rebuild its population while I pillage the remaining jars once or twice a week or as needed.
In addition to the copious pod population, I will attempt to wean the mandarin onto frozen mysis, and ultimately, Formula 1 or Marine Cuisine. I've read reports of an LFS worker in Australia having an 80% success rate with getting mandarins to accept prepared or frozen foods. He used freshly hatched brine shrimp and "gut loaded" them with bloodworms and other frozen and processed fare, and slowly he weaned the mandarins onto the regular foods.
Some Tricks
Many hobbyists over the years have discovered a few tricks to help get a mandarin eating or plump. I've outlined several of them below.
* Use a refugium.
* Create a "pod pile" of small chunks of live rock in a corner. Pile the rubble up so fish cannot enter and spray the area with minute bits of food to herd the pods into the safety area to feed and reproduce.
* Target feed blood or blackworms, mysis, or Marine Cuisine to a crevice in the live rock. It is believed fish have selective memories and return to a location that is known to hold food.
* Employ a mandarin diner. Though this looks good on paper, I'll be very interested to see if it does anything for a mandarin that doesn't eat prepared foods.
* Stock your tank with porous and gnarly live rock. More surface area the better, and place them so there are fish-free areas. By many reports, mandarin success has as much to do with the placement and type of live rock as it does with the volume.
* Employ non-combative tankmates that won't go after pods. According to several hobbyists, some mandarins have duplicated the behaviors of other fish. One was even reported to have imitated a crab and begun to consume baby brine shrimp in the water column.
* Style your tank around the needs of pods and mandarins.
Conclusion
I don't know if this will work. But I'm willing to risk a lot--the fish, as well as a fair chunk of money--because I believe there is no reason why this hypothesis will not hold water. Nothing tried, nothing gained, as I see it. I've put a lot of thought and time into this project, not to mention investment. I would love to see mandarinfish in smaller tanks because they so easily get lost in the huge systems. I've thought my way through every step of the way, and if I fail... well, I can't say that I haven't been warned.
Progress
I've had the mandarin for one week now. As posted in my blog, he continues to graze on the live rock, sand, and glass, and he continues to snare a goody every 5-10 minutes. I've injected pods twice now into the main tank. I added a scrubber pad into my little HOB filter box. The idea of the scrubber in the filter is to spray the fresh pods into the filter box and let them trickle down into the main tank as they are attracted to light. Algae and detritus from the filter, in theory, should sustain a small fuge-like population in the box.
Now the bad news.
The mandarin is not as plump as I'd like him be. He has improved since purchase, but I can still make out the line in his abdomen. I fear I may have bought one too far gone. As I see amphipods on almost every patch of sand and rock I look closely on, and I can find copepods with a flashlight at night, losing him will not be for want of food.
I've been in touch with Dr. Rhodes and I have started my second culture jar. However, my first jar may have been contaminated. I introduced some algae into the jar, and it could have possibly fouled the water and stunted the culture. Today I removed most of the algae with a prong. I believe most of the pods are deep in the sponge and out of my view, so I will have to wait longer to see a population boom.
Lessons learned: Do not add algae. It can hold unconducive hitchhikers as well as pollute the culture. Also, wait until you are seeing large growth before adding the scrubber. The pods seem to disappear into the pad and it is hard to gauge when you're ready to split the culture.
Final thoughts
Please see next post for final thoughts.
As you can probably guess by the title, this post pertains to mandarinfish. Ready for the controversy? I'm trying to keep a green mandarin in a ten gallon tank.
Only reason I'm posting my project is because this is MFT... I could never dream of posting this on another board. People are too nasty and their arguments are circular--they are unwilling to open their mind on the idea, and any time someone offers a researched and thought-out method, the thread degenerates into a mire.
I've done a lot of reading, planning, and writing on this, and I'm sharing everything because I believe what I'm doing advances the marine hobby, whether I succeed or fail.
I'm copying a lot from my article I posted on my site as well as my blog.
Let's begin, shall we?
Philosophy
I believe keeping a healthy, happy green mandarin goby in a ten gallon tank is possible. I also believe we will soon be seeing tank-raised and aquacultured green mandarins in the next ten years. Feeding issues will be a thing of the past, and farm-raised mandarins will eagerly accept frozen and processed foods. Nano tanks are very new to the saltwater scene, and fifteen years ago a reef aquarium under 55 gallons was absolutely unheard of. Thanks to new lighting technology and the Berlin method of natural filtration through live rock, smaller quantities of water are holding fish and corals aquarists never dreamed of keeping.
Mandarins are some of the most popular, easily available, and cheapest fish on the saltwater market. They experience the greatest mortality rate of marine fish as well. Given these two facts, and given the nature of capitalism (let alone the evolutionary advancement of the marine and reef hobby), I believe we'll be hearing a lot more stories of mandarins eating frozen and pellet food and thriving in tanks once thought impossible to sustain them.
In fact, this is already happening. Many marine hobbyists who've done their homework have reported success in keeping mandarins in nanos, and several have even weaned them onto pellet food. Unfortunately, people are often afraid to admit their success on forums. As mentioned above, keeping mandarins in anything but the traditionally accepted housing--100 gallons, 100+ pounds of live rock, a 2-year old, "mature" tank--brings out the worst in some people. For whatever reason, they will not open their minds to even the idea of success.
Now some additional thoughts:
* I will do everything in my power to provide the mandarin with the nutrition and care it needs.
* I believe experimenting with pets is good, as long as the caregiver has done his homework.
* Fish are not people. Attaching human elements onto fish or any lower animal is a fallacy. I am not "torturing" a fish for selfish or aesthetic reasons; I am advancing the hobby by trying to do what others have successfully done before.
* If my experiment fails, I am prepared to "eat" the fish and all the expenses. I will return the mandarin to the LFS, and I will probably try again with another specimen. If I fail again, I will most likely give up; however, I will never condemn someone who tries the same thing.
* I will not know if things are going swimmingly until I reach the six month mark.
The Plan
I will arrange my tank to accommodate copepods, the mandarin's main food source. Instead of a fuge or a sump I will culture the pods in a separate venue: several quart mason jars on the windowsill. I will inject the tank with fresh pods on a regular basis so the population will always stay at adequate levels.
I will be using Essential Live Feed's Oceanpods.
Each bottle contains 1000 copepods of three different species. They are nutritionally dense and provide the essential fatty acids that brine and other food often given to mandarins do not. Also, if you're able to sustain a constant population, you'll not have to worry about getting your mandarin to eat frozen or processed foods ever again!
According to Dr. Adelaide Rhodes, the creator of Oceanpods, "It is difficult to believe that something so small could have such a significant impact on the nutritional value of fish, but a good analogy is the dependence of whales on krill. Krill are just another type of marine crustacean rich in essential fatty acids, and the preferred food of many species of whale, which filter the krill out of the water by pushing them through the fine mesh of baleen found inside their mouths. Without the krill, the whales would die. Think of the size of the whale compared to the krill and you can begin to see how significant Copepods can be in the marine food web." (source link)
Please see Dr. Rhodes's site for more information.
Above is the beginning of my pod factory, which will consist of multiple quart jars, each containing a nontoxic plastic dish scrubber (the coarse type of sponge that looks like fishing net). Once the progenitor batch of pods multiply and the population takes off, I will split the culture to the second jar, and then the third, etc. I estimate in a month's time I will be able to lift a scrubber from one jar and shake out enough pods in various life stages to keep my main tank's population at sustainable levels. The decimated quart jar will then have enough time to rebuild its population while I pillage the remaining jars once or twice a week or as needed.
In addition to the copious pod population, I will attempt to wean the mandarin onto frozen mysis, and ultimately, Formula 1 or Marine Cuisine. I've read reports of an LFS worker in Australia having an 80% success rate with getting mandarins to accept prepared or frozen foods. He used freshly hatched brine shrimp and "gut loaded" them with bloodworms and other frozen and processed fare, and slowly he weaned the mandarins onto the regular foods.
Some Tricks
Many hobbyists over the years have discovered a few tricks to help get a mandarin eating or plump. I've outlined several of them below.
* Use a refugium.
* Create a "pod pile" of small chunks of live rock in a corner. Pile the rubble up so fish cannot enter and spray the area with minute bits of food to herd the pods into the safety area to feed and reproduce.
* Target feed blood or blackworms, mysis, or Marine Cuisine to a crevice in the live rock. It is believed fish have selective memories and return to a location that is known to hold food.
* Employ a mandarin diner. Though this looks good on paper, I'll be very interested to see if it does anything for a mandarin that doesn't eat prepared foods.
* Stock your tank with porous and gnarly live rock. More surface area the better, and place them so there are fish-free areas. By many reports, mandarin success has as much to do with the placement and type of live rock as it does with the volume.
* Employ non-combative tankmates that won't go after pods. According to several hobbyists, some mandarins have duplicated the behaviors of other fish. One was even reported to have imitated a crab and begun to consume baby brine shrimp in the water column.
* Style your tank around the needs of pods and mandarins.
Conclusion
I don't know if this will work. But I'm willing to risk a lot--the fish, as well as a fair chunk of money--because I believe there is no reason why this hypothesis will not hold water. Nothing tried, nothing gained, as I see it. I've put a lot of thought and time into this project, not to mention investment. I would love to see mandarinfish in smaller tanks because they so easily get lost in the huge systems. I've thought my way through every step of the way, and if I fail... well, I can't say that I haven't been warned.
Progress
I've had the mandarin for one week now. As posted in my blog, he continues to graze on the live rock, sand, and glass, and he continues to snare a goody every 5-10 minutes. I've injected pods twice now into the main tank. I added a scrubber pad into my little HOB filter box. The idea of the scrubber in the filter is to spray the fresh pods into the filter box and let them trickle down into the main tank as they are attracted to light. Algae and detritus from the filter, in theory, should sustain a small fuge-like population in the box.
Now the bad news.
The mandarin is not as plump as I'd like him be. He has improved since purchase, but I can still make out the line in his abdomen. I fear I may have bought one too far gone. As I see amphipods on almost every patch of sand and rock I look closely on, and I can find copepods with a flashlight at night, losing him will not be for want of food.
I've been in touch with Dr. Rhodes and I have started my second culture jar. However, my first jar may have been contaminated. I introduced some algae into the jar, and it could have possibly fouled the water and stunted the culture. Today I removed most of the algae with a prong. I believe most of the pods are deep in the sponge and out of my view, so I will have to wait longer to see a population boom.
Lessons learned: Do not add algae. It can hold unconducive hitchhikers as well as pollute the culture. Also, wait until you are seeing large growth before adding the scrubber. The pods seem to disappear into the pad and it is hard to gauge when you're ready to split the culture.
Final thoughts
Please see next post for final thoughts.
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