burrier;2543531; said:
i have heard about half and half with this fish. i asked a guy at my local petshop and he said that he has one in a 55 gallon with tons of live rock and prepared food and his has been alive for over 4 months. it sounds like a lot of work but everyone has their own opinion. thanks guys!
Well that may be due to the large amount of LR with pods, or it truely might be mainly on prepared, and even if it wasn't fully, it could still get what it wanted from the rock. Also it may up to around 6 months for a mandarin to fully stare to death, so thats why short term sucess really isn't sucess at all with these fish, when someone says they had it for a year or longer, that is when I tune in.
Anyhow, I think you are getting the split opinions, because many are unaware it is possible, and those who are usually are aware that most likely it will lots of time and effort to get these fish onto prepared, and even then the success rate isn't 100%, I think even 80% would be thinking really optimistic, so by no means am I advocating the prepared method, I am just saying it is possible for certain members of the species to accept it. In fact, I've seen online nano setups sucessfully keep these long term (which seeing how they are getting bigger during the time, they definately arent starving either).
Also in my readings, I found out that tank bred and younger ones have a greater sucess rate, so if you attempt to get one to go onto prepared, the smaller the better, and once again check the stomach as they may allready be too far gone.
