
The most common way live foods are given to mandarins are via rigid tubing with pipettes or turkey basters. How can this be combated? Green Mandarins will revert to eating live foods when either under stress or simply when comfortable around your method of distribution, as seen in the above video. Eventually the pods will mostly be juvenile and unable to reproduce, letting the Green Mandarin wipe out the entire population! However as the cycle continues the pods will be of younger and younger age, making them less likely to reproduce. For example a Green Mandarin who eats 1,000 pods per day in a tank that produces 1,000 pods a day sounds possible.

While tanks are often able to keep up production of pods with the mandarins intake, they cannot be sustained. The ones most frequently used to feed Green Mandarins are copepods and amphipods, with Tisbe Pods ( Tisbe biminiensis) being the most frequently used pod. Pods are small crustaceans that offer high amounts of nutrition. Green Mandarins are constantly hunting for various pods to eat in the tank.
#WHATSIZE AQUARIUM FOR GREEN MANDARIN FREE#
The Green Mandarin does swim in the water column much more frequently then other members of the dragonet family but still spends plenty of time picking the rocks and glass for copepods, making it a mixture of bottom dweller and free swimming fish. This allows them to hide from aggressive fish, or simply dash away when startled. The Green Mandarin is a peaceful fish capable of extreme, but short, bursts of speed which leave only a dust trail visible. While mandarins can come in a variety of colors and sizes, the Green Mandarin is a mixture of blue, orange and green.

Their behaviors mimic that of a humming bird, as do their feeding habits. The Green Mandarin is one of the most exotic salt water fish available.
