mandarin goby - feeding habits and the murder of the crabs

[LynnEdwards]

We purchased a mandarin goby and 2 emerald crabs at rca yesterday - the crabs to eat bubble algae as was recommended here and the goby because he just looked cool as heck.

I don't think the crabs made it. I'm not sure what I did wrong but I'm sure it was something to do with acclimation. I put the bag in without lights for 20 minutes then added 1/4th a cup of water every 15 minutes for an hour. As this point with the mandarin I pulled out 1/2 a cup of water and did another 1/4 cup of water for another 30 minutes but I tossed the crabs right in.

They never really moved from where I put them.

In terms of water I have 0/0/0 for ammonia, nitrites and nitrates. My salinity is a bit higher at 1.24/1.25.

The goby has been poking around all the rocks and looking just fine. My husband named him 'Picasso' at rca which I thought sounded very cool. He looks just like an oil painting.

I know Picasso has finicky eating habits. We got a bottle of the 'pods' the refrigerated kind. I gave him a squirt of this yesterday evening but he ignored it.

SO my question is this - how often do I need to squirt these dead pods at him and will he actually eat them? RCA did not have the live pods and when we went by another store, we were told buying them live was a waste of money.

Thoughts?

[LynnEdwards]

Update - the crabs live!

I was sure they were goners as they didn't move or budge from their original location yesterday.

This morning both were climbing rocks and moving around. (I made my first post before lights on!) Crazy!

[migs]

good news!

as far as pods, the red pods are cold water and will not survive long term... continue to use them to feed but buy the pods rca has on the shelf (opposite display tank). add them at night to help seed and build a healthy pod populationin your tank.

[Timfish]

You may already know this but the molts for Emerald Crabs are fairly substantial and may initially look like a dead one. The molts can be dried and "reinforced" with super glue if you're into showing off wierd stuff.

With a 75 gal you may have enough stuff to feed the Mandarin without haveing to supplement it's diet but at least for the short term it's probably a good idea to do small amounts occasionally/daily. They are very dainty eaters so don't do very much at any one time unless you're feeding other fish also.

[jestep]

There's also methods to training the mandarin to accept frozen or live brine or mysis shrimp. Definitely worth attempting for the overall benefit of the fish.

[+o0zarkawater]

How long has your tank been setup and about how much rock do you have? Did you buy your rock live from another member, 'live' from a LFS, or dry?

Do you have a refugium?

I have a spotted mandarin in my 55gal tank that I've had for a little more than a year. Currently he is not only eating pods, but will eat frozen mysis and even pellet. He did not start out this way though. I made sure I had a very healthy pod population before adding him to the tank, and I also had a pretty nice planaria population as well. I bought a HOB refugium (I'm sumpless) to make sure there was a safe place for the pods to reproduce and breed.

Mandarins are very pretty fish, but unless you have a decently established tank with a hefty pod population, they can be hard to keep.

[+etannert]

Hey Lynn, did you start your tank with live rock or dead rock? And how long has the tank been up? A mandarin can decimate a pod population in short order if that population hasn't had much time to grow. At night, or if you haven't cleaned your glass for a couple of days, do you see little white dots all over the place? If so - good news - you are probably good to go for a mandarin. If not - there's a good chance your pod population is not well enough established to withstand the grazing habits of a mandarin yet. Mandarins are like hummingbirds, they hover constantly, have very high metabolisms, and feed pretty much nonstop. I was once told that you want to see your mandarin pecking every 3-5 sec. Most mandarins won't recognize frozen food of any sort, so the frozen liquid pod solution is not likely to elicit a response. As mentioned above, Tigger Pods are a cold-water species and won't establish a breeding population in your tank. The Reef Pods product RCA carries, or the Pods+ from ReefCleaners (get in on our group buy ending tonight!), are the best option for getting the pods in your tank going, but you'd need to remove the mandarin first to give the pods a fighting chance to breed before getting wiped out. There is a method for training a mandarin to eat frozen brine/mysis/etc., but it involves access to live food (Aquatek and AquaDome usually carry live brine), twice daily feedings, and a breeder net. There is a great thread here:

http://www.dfwmas.org/Forums/viewtopic.php?f=47&t=91200

on this exact subject. The frozen-foods training method is about 2/3 of the way down. You also want to avoid other pod-eating fish such as wrasses and hogfish while you're trying to get the pods to establish themselves, and you want to have a place where the pods can breed without predators such as a refugium, cryptic zone, or LR rubble pile.

You might consider, for the good of the fish, rehoming him until your tank is better established. Mandarins are gorgeous but need to be considered an "expert only" fish as they require a well-established tank. Once they find the nooks and crannies of your tank they can be quite reclusive so you may not have the opportunity to get him out later if he starts to look skinny. If you start to see the lateral ridges on his sides stick out, or his belly looks sunken in, it's time for him to go to another tank before he starves to death.

[+Hydro]

I've done a lot of research on pods and am actually culturing 4 different kinds right now. Buy tisbe pods to stock your tank with, I bought algen brand. They are tough pods, can handle lots of abuse and reproduce fast in our tanks. Also this type of pods lives on surfaces, not suspended in the water column like some. It best to drip acclimate pods because they are usually in very low salinity so dumping in live pods from the bottle is a death sentence. After drip accimating put them in the tank and feed them sinking pellets every few days, drop in a small pinch of them along the back glass letting them fall behind the rocks, the pods will eat them. Just don't over do it.

Mandarins will not starve overnight, may take months before it might be a problem. If you see it getting skinny after you have made efforts to feed it then you may need to find a new home. Most likely you will be fine as long as you have no other pod eaters. Also try frozen brine shrimp, if it eats them dose with some vitamins (zoe). Their mouths are tiny so frozen food must be small. My madarin pecks at the rocks every 10 seconds or so and keeps a good weight.

[LynnEdwards]

My tank is only a few months old - I have 130 lbs of live rock in it - and it is all 'live rock' purchased from established tanks (most of it is very purpled).

This morning I had white dots all over my tank - the clowns were up nibbling at them.

I was thinking I'd try to feed the cold water pods every day and put in some live pods at night to get them all over my rocks.

[LynnEdwards]

OH - fish wise we have 2 yellow tangs (babies), 2 clowns (also babies) and Picasso - We have plans to add 3 purple fire gobys in the future sometime.

[ClarkiiCircus]

Hey there,

I'm actually in the process of starting a mandarin goby tank at this time: currently I'm letting my water culture the pods for about 1 month just to be sure. Your best bet is to take a few precautionary steps to ensure the pods can maintain themselves. Firstly, start by buying LIVE pods from a fish store: aquadome does this- they will walk through all their tanks with a sieve and snag pods out of their tropical and coral tanks for you and put them in a baggie for $10.That will give you a baseline to start a culture. Because they're not cold water species they will survive in your tank longterm no problem. Secondly, try to build an environment for the copepods to thrive in. A good method of this is to make sashes out of very fine netting like cheesecloth that the pods can freely pass through, but the goby cannot. Aquatek has a great example of this in one of their front tanks last time I checked. You can fill the sash with either live rubble (very finely crushed liverock and shells, aquatek sells it, or smash some of your own), or macroalgae such as chaeto: this will allow a breeding spot for the copepods while not being preyed on. It looks a little silly, so just shove it in the back of your tank. Also, I've heard of great success getting the goby to eat other kinds of food by learning from other fish especially tangs. Try to spot feed the goby some brine shrimp in a QT and see if he attempts to hunt it. If he does, release him into the normal tank and spot feed him periodically: Brine shrimp is like french fries for fish, not very nutritious but theyll gobble it up! Because of this though, slowly mix in frozen brine if you see him eating it, and continue to spot feed. Finally, if he eats that mix frozen brine and frozen micis to wean him off pods entirely. Note that all gobys are different so its kind of a crapshoot. But, if you have little copepod colonies in the sashes, and have that stable population you'll have plenty of time to try to teach. my friends goby did learn to eat and love pellets though by literally just watching his tang do it. What it comes down to is bottle of pods to stock your tank always is super expensive: try to each other ways and even breed your own pods! Try a variety of techniques and he should be fine! Good luck!

[Aaarrrggg]

Good mandarin advice! I'm looking forward to getting one too when my tank is old enough.

I saw you mentioned firefish, I've been reading up on them too for my tank and it seems they do best (longterm) alone or in confirmed pairs. Odd I know, as they look shoaly in store tanks, but I wanted to give you a heads up do they don't end up fighting.

[LynnEdwards]

Mandarin died this morning. Poor goby

48 hours...did he starve to death even with the red pods? Not sure what went wrong.

[AquaJohn]

if it was only 4 days I doubt it was food. When you got him did it have a fat belly ? if so it takes weeks/months for them to starve.

I killed tons of fish when I started then after about 8-12 months the magic kicked in and no more fish losses.

[LynnEdwards]

if it was only 4 days I doubt it was food. When you got him did it have a fat belly ? if so it takes weeks/months for them to starve.

I killed tons of fish when I started then after about 8-12 months the magic kicked in and no more fish losses.

And what was the cause of your fish dying?

[cMidd]

^his tank was young in all probability...i did the same thing. Don't add too much to fast, and some thing really shouldn't be added until after atleast 6months anyway

[LynnEdwards]

^his tank was young in all probability...i did the same thing. Don't add too much to fast, and some thing really shouldn't be added until after atleast 6months anyway

Im truly not trying to be a PITA - what's the difference between my tank being 2 months vs 6 months vs 1 year? IF my water tests right - what is wrong? What is going to happen between month 2 and month 6 to make my take magically 'ready' for this that or the other?

[cMidd]

There are some on this forum; Timfish, subsea, etc that can really answer that question fully. But it has to do with tank maturity. It may be done "cycling" but that doesn't mean it has a natural pod population to support a fish that typically eats only pods. There is a bunch of other examples that others can give you...if I find a good explanation I'll post it for you just think of it as puberty for a fish tank lol for lack Of a better explanation

[JasonJones]

There are a number of factors that make a 1 year old tank substantially more stable than a 2 month old tank.

Reef tanks are very complex eco-systems. Because of the closed systems we run, one of the most important things is nutrient control. This happens through a number of outlets; including micro-fauna, plankton, foam fractionation, chemical filtration, mechanical filtration, bacteria, etc. Without a doubt, the bacteria and micro-fauna are the most important two elements of the system. We often forget this and focus more on the sexy items (like skimmers and reactors). However, bacteria and microorganisms perform most of the work.

Your rock was purchased from other hobbyist; this is good. The rock should be full of bacteria and other micro fauna. However, the rock is the only thing full of life at this point. It takes time for the sand to become teeming with creatures. It also takes time for bacteria to coat the tank, plumbing, walls, sand etc... As time goes on and these processes take place, the tank becomes increasingly more stable and "mature."

This is not to say your mandrin died because the tank is two months old. If he died in only a few days, he was on his way out already.

Also, I would be a little suspect of your test kits if everything is testing 0 already. Most new tanks with that stocking load, even with good live rock, would still show some ammonia, nitrite and nitrate.

[+etannert]

Great discussion of tank maturity and the various cycles a "young" tank goes through here:

http://www.dfwmas.org/Forums/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=23791

[AquaJohn]

Thats why I said "the magic happend" I don't know what why where when or how but one day the tank just started to work. The fish were not all added at one time and not all fish that were added died but from 2ish to 7ish months I could add a fish it would be happy eating and cool for 3 days to a week then they would just be dead.

I think it may have been Jake at RCA that first brought up somthing happening to a tank at around the 1 year mark that just makes it work and after that I read several other "magical events" lol.

And my tank was started with rock from a 5 year old tank and he said he got it from somone that had it up for over 10 years. Most of it is real old school tonga .

[+etannert]

As I think someone else said, if it was 48 hrs the fish was on its way out already.

However, question for you... where are you keeping your salinty and how are you checking it? Hydrometers can give falsely low readings (i.e. your salinity may be high) and many fish stores keep their salinity low to save money. If there is a big enough discrepancy it could be really hard on a fish that has already gone through a number of changes (wholesaler's tank, shipping, store's tank, bagging, etc.) in the last week or so and may have gone a week without eating much before getting to you. The fish may also have been bullied in the store's tank and may have been bullied in yours as well. You might look into drip acclimation.

[LynnEdwards]

There are a number of factors that make a 1 year old tank substantially more stable than a 2 month old tank.

Reef tanks are very complex eco-systems. Because of the closed systems we run, one of the most important things is nutrient control. This happens through a number of outlets; including micro-fauna, plankton, foam fractionation, chemical filtration, mechanical filtration, bacteria, etc. Without a doubt, the bacteria and micro-fauna are the most important two elements of the system. We often forget this and focus more on the sexy items (like skimmers and reactors). However, bacteria and microorganisms perform most of the work.

Your rock was purchased from other hobbyist; this is good. The rock should be full of bacteria and other micro fauna. However, the rock is the only thing full of life at this point. It takes time for the sand to become teeming with creatures. It also takes time for bacteria to coat the tank, plumbing, walls, sand etc... As time goes on and these processes take place, the tank becomes increasingly more stable and "mature."

This is not to say your mandrin died because the tank is two months old. If he died in only a few days, he was on his way out already.

Also, I would be a little suspect of your test kits if everything is testing 0 already. Most new tanks with that stocking load, even with good live rock, would still show some ammonia, nitrite and nitrate.

The first week we DID show nitrates - only a small amount. We did water changes every week for the first two weeks because of that.

Last week we did have a 'trace' of ammonia - the guys at RCA said this would show up due to our 'fish peeing' for lack of a better word. This week I didn't even show that.

We are taking water in to RCA and having them do testing - also Im testing it myself.

[LynnEdwards]

As I think someone else said, if it was 48 hrs the fish was on its way out already.

However, question for you... where are you keeping your salinty and how are you checking it? Hydrometers can give falsely low readings (i.e. your salinity may be high) and many fish stores keep their salinity low to save money. If there is a big enough discrepancy it could be really hard on a fish that has already gone through a number of changes (wholesaler's tank, shipping, store's tank, bagging, etc.) in the last week or so and may have gone a week without eating much before getting to you. The fish may also have been bullied in the store's tank and may have been bullied in yours as well. You might look into drip acclimation.

I actually did pick up a drip kit last time - Our salinity is 1.024-1.025 we do have a hydrometer, but we had them test it at RCA two weeks ago and it read 1.024. I DO know this is higher than most fish stores but I've read that corals do better at higher salinity as well as anemones.

Now - I did NOT drip acclimate the goby. I put him in after 2 hours of adding 1/4 a cup every 15 minutes (also let him temp acclimate 20 minutes before I did anything else).

So my substrate I purchased from someone else breaking down their tank - my live rock was from a 200 gallon tank that was being broken down - also some of it from mrrobb I believe - my fav rock too.

The bacteria in my sump/filter isn't there yet but with 130 lbs of live rock, I thought we had an okay bio filter already set up since our readings have been spot on for over a month.

This all being said - I really think what i need to do is

1) add live pods and establish them on our rocks with what we have for a few more months

2) set up our extra hex tank as a holding tank and put live rock/pods into that

3) pray that what we have in there now makes it I'm awful attached to what we currently have.

[Timfish]

I set up my tanks essentially the same way and rarely see any kind of "cycle" or ammonia and nitrite spikes that occur when setting up a rock with dead rock so your readings are pretty much what I would expect. I haven't looked at the link to DFMAS but Nilsen and Fossa "The Modern Reef Aquarium" Vol I has a good chart and some good pictures of what goes on the fisrt 300 days or so in a tank. As pointed out by JasonJones and others the systems we set up are VERY COMPLEX and are ALWAYs in a state of flux. Since you've used so much rock and sand from established tanks your tank may "mature" very quickly. While there isn't a real good way to say a tank is "mature" usually in the first 8 -14 months there are very noticable cycles initially with the various algeas then some of the other inverts. Sometimes I'll see spikes in small featherdusters then they largely disappear or small shrimp but irregardless of the specific species there are are series of boom and bust cycles with some of the inverts during or after the cycles with the algae that settle down to realtively stable populations and that's when I think of a tank as mature. As long as I'm happy with basic parameters I don't hesitate to add the relatively safe/easy corals, fish and inverts, waiting a few weeks between additions for the animals to settle in. I would suggest the next time you do a water change test your new makeup water before you do the water change, I wouldn't be surprised if it has some ammonia. Times I have tested my water I have seen ammonia as high as 1 ppm, testing the water in my tank after a 20% water change it takes about 18 hours for it to be consumed by the bacteria and corals (I don't know if you're aware but corals will use ammonia to feed thier zooanthellae).

I'm sorry to hear about your mandarin but I share Etannert's perception if a fish dies with in a couple of days it already had someting wrong and wasn't able to deal with the stress. I try to do drip acclimation but I don't see anything wrong with the way you acclimated it.