Can be trained to eat mysis from a pipette, with a lot of patience, or luck.

A reef rubble zone or fuge is ideal to breed copepods where the mandarin cannot pick them off. The regulary (every two weeks or so) feeding of copepods keeps them fat.

If kept in pairs, can spawn in captivity, and will dance at sunset.

I have been keeping it for more than a year. I have 80 kg live rock and he is constantly grazing on the rocks.

Our mandarin feeds from a pipet' i know this is down to dumb luck as we r new to it. Jackie and Paul

Mandarins are interesting little fish that will eat frozen foods and usually pellet too but it is no mean feat getting them to eat it.

My advice as a safeguard is to train a mandarin to eat these foods before introducing it into a display tank. The easiest way to do this is a bare quarantine tank (fairly small) connected to the main system or even a large breeding trap then introduce some live bloodworm a piece at a time. Mandarins always eat this. after a few days the fish will have cottoned on that YOU mean FOOD and this is the time to begin introducing frozen brine shrimp and mysis (whole neomysis integer is best or any other largish species such as PE mysis. Depending on how long you wish to quarantine this fish youcan finally start introducing small pellets (I use dragon feeds) and what you may find is that your mandarin will accept these after a week or two

Patience is the key

Im currently looking into the captive breeding of mandarins, hopefully when i get settled i will have the opportunity to actually have a bash. They have been raised in germany and florida as far as im aware and the babies have no issues with taking dry feeds. I wouldnt sell a mandarin that wasnt eating first TBH

Tom

That would be fantastic if you can do it.

Ours were spawning regularly in the reef. Our male would eat pellet, flake, mysis, brine, bits of prawn and even bits of mussel that were on the bottom - he'd display at the hermits to defend it too..

Like i said its all in the pipeline and something i'm aiming for, I also want to have a bash with dwarf angels before my time is up.
last

Mandarins are ace little fish that arent, yet again, as difficult to keep as people think or are told with a bit of time and patience!

Blue chest regal angels arent meant to eat full stop in captivity, especially adults, well, last week one arrived as an accidental import, i had it feed no problem after a few days chowing down on flake, mussel cockle and anything else. Again patience and presentation was the method, one bite, the smell is imprinted into the fish, no problems feeding from there on

Also I have had several harlequin filefish pairs recently all of them with a bit of persuasion took well to ocean nutrition carnivore flake and dragon feed pellets, my personal pair spawned once before i killed them with a faulty heater DOH!!!!

Tom

breeding mandarins has been done before,

ill go find the link quick one sec!

http://www.marinebreeder.org/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=1963


hth
chris

Thats the main place i been researching as well as a few other more direct means, i wasnt sure whether it was acceptable to post that link (it being to another forum)

Tom

Good read .Good luck with the breading .