# Green Mandarin Goby



## sarah7287 (Oct 1, 2008)

Hi i just got a green mandarin a few days ago and the person i got him from said that all he ever ate was copepods, i know i have some in the tank be i bought some a while back, can i try to feed him something else? Ive heard that like black worms are ok for them. Is there a way to boost the copepods? and is it ok for the other 2 fish to eat the worms also? they are a blue damsel and a 6 line wrasse.


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## redpaulhus (Jan 18, 2005)

You can try to get him eating other foods (freshly hatched live brine shrimp, frozen mysids, frozen cyclopeeze, etc).
Blackworms would be better than nothing but would be lacking in many essential fatty acids (HUFA's).
Most mandarins sadly starve in captivity.
A large plankton producing refugium, a very mature tank with tons of liverock, and no competing micropredators (ie no damsels, dottybacks, small wrasses, etc) would be the key to having enough copepods.

I usually recommend about 100lb of liverock, in a tank for about a year, with no fishes the whole time, and a good sized refugium, to build a pod population with a hope of keeping a mandarin alive. 
This is why most books and reefkeeping sites recommend against mandarins in most home aquaria, I'm afraid.


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## Fishfirst (Jan 24, 2005)

like Red said, that sixline will eat all the copepods before the little guy has a chance. If he doesn't start eating prepared foods within the month he'll be dead. Start with brine shrimp in a bottle that only he can enter (but well ventilated)


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## TheOldSalt (Jan 28, 2005)

You can also buy live 'pods in a bottle nowadays, but they're very, very expensive. You would have come out cheaper just building the right kind of tank for a mandarin in the first place, they're so expensive. I can't believe the guy at the petstore actually told you the truth about them for a change.
Anyway, you'll probably never be able to pull it off in time, but you could build a second tank of about 30 gallons, stuff it half full with live rock, let a lot of algae grow in it, and dump two bottles of 'pods in it. In a few months, you might have enough pods to feed a mandarin.
On rare occasion a mandarin will eat something else, so you might get lucky. Try offering a wide variety of anything you can get, and maybe you'll get lucky.


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## sarah7287 (Oct 1, 2008)

Well so far, he is eating the worms and when i fed the others the frozen brine i saw him eat a few pieces of that also, so its a good sign right? i hope so bc i really like him.


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## Fishhorder (Sep 21, 2009)

It's nice to see that I'm not the only one in the retail side of this hobby that inform customers on the truth of fish....Piranah, Oscars, Scooter blennies, mandarins and so on.

I did have a beautiful male blue mandarin until one night my daughter brought home Godzilla the red hermit crab and put it in the tank without me knowing and I woke up in the morning to that huge monster eating him. I did train him to eat in a jar and I used live gut loaded adult brine and mixed formula one and two pellets and within a month of using the jar he was eating in the mix of everyone else.


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## Fishfirst (Jan 24, 2005)

Hey fishhorder, who do you work for?


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## Fishhorder (Sep 21, 2009)

I worked at Advanced Aquarium Systems in Green Bay and now I am at Fish Unlimited in Green Bay.


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## Fishfirst (Jan 24, 2005)

I have never been to either stores, but I know the owner of AAS.


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## Fishhorder (Sep 21, 2009)

My husband helped John build the one side of AAS and they have been friends for 25 years. I've known him 17 or 18 yrs and the owner of Fish Unlimited is a former employee of AAS from years ago. Half of AAS's saltwater room has been replaced with cichlids.


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