Jestersix

Captive bred mandarins

Fish Boss

Fish Boss

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Hey everyone, I had a question about captive bred mandarins. These fish are extremely extraordinary creatures, and I hope that I can provide a suitable environment for one in the near future. I've been reading about them for a while now, and I will definitely not buy one until I have a huge pod population in tank, along with a pod culturing set up outside of the tank. I would like to do this right, and buy captive bred instead of wild caught. However, I'm having a hard time finding these fish captive bred online. I have found one source online selling them for $85 each, and I was hoping to find them for cheaper. Can anyone point me in the right direction for these fish? Thanks!
 
The problem with finding captive bred mandarin's is people won't pay the higher price for them. Ora shut down their program because wild -caught were sold at less than half the price and still are. I looked for captive bred before I bought my two and couldn't find any.

Also I am a relatively new reefer, but haven't found them particularly hard to keep and mine are the fattest ones I've ever seen. It takes some research and a commitment, but starting a pod population isn't difficult. I think that most people have trouble with them because they start the wrong or just a single population. After speaking to Ora and to the owner of reef nutrition it became clear that the best way to build a sustainable population was to build multiple populations of different types of pods. Pod populations increase and decrease naturally and each type gravitates to different areas of the aquarium. By stocking multiple types you don't have to worry about the pickings getting slim if the population of one type of pod goes through a natural "dry" spell.

I stocked the tank and very tiny refugium with Tisbe, Tigger, Nitokra and Euterpina.
 
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roostertech said:
Define tiny? I'm pondering about a 5 gal dedicated pod hotels outside of the sump. Do you have issue with other wrasse competing with your mandarin?
Click to expand...

Much smaller than that. It's a media basket turned refugium in my IM 120. It has one nice size ball of Chaeto in it. I don't have wrasses n the tank. Got tired of them jumping (at least for now.)
 
We ended up with a pair of the ORA mandarins in our new tank, though they don't sell them anymore. The ORA folks brought a variety of fish to a show out here and left many of them with one of our LFS in exchange for a borrowed show tank and some gear. We ended up with an ORA Yellow Assessor and a pair of ORA Mandarins.

They're already beginning the exciting courtship dances in our tank at night, though no complete spawning yet.
 
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