A copepod every five to ten seconds, and a few thousand a day
Almost everything about a mandarin goby is easy. The water is standard reef, the fish is peaceful, and one source calls it very reef-safe. The exception is the food, and Fishkeeping World gives the figure that decides the record: it can eat one copepod every 5 to 10 seconds, with most fish consuming up to a few thousand copepods daily.
Aquarium Store Depot types the diet carnivore, copepods and small invertebrates, and says these fish eat almost exclusively live copepods. Wikipedia gives the wild list and every item on it is a small animal living on or in the substrate: harpacticoid copepods, polychaete worms, small gastropods, gammaridean amphipods, fish eggs and ostracods, with feeding continuous through daylight hours.
Then the instruction that follows from the arithmetic, and it is the only purchase instruction on this site expressed as a date. Aquarium Store Depot: do not buy a mandarin goby until your tank has been established for at least 12 months with a healthy, visible copepod population. It adds that even a mature tank cannot sustain the consumption rate on its own, so you need a refugium under the display tank or a separate culture of a fast-reproducing species such as Tigriopus or Tisbe.
The consequence is that the 30 gallon tank figure on this record is not about the fish. A mandarin goby is two and a half to three inches long. The volume is there to grow food, which inverts the usual reading of a tank row: on almost every other record here the number tracks the animal, and on this one it tracks the animal’s dinner.
Why this record was written now
- The gap
- Three thousand four hundred searches a month, and the last row in our keyword map. It is the second saltwater record here.
- What it changes
- The third record whose trade name names the wrong family, the first tank figure on this site set by the food rather than the fish, and the widest captive-to-wild lifespan gap here.
- What it does not
- No growth rate, because no source publishes one, and no verdict on whether a given fish will take pellets, because that appears to depend on whether it was wild caught or bred.
It is not a goby, and on this fish the wrong family is the expensive kind of wrong
| Sold as | Actually | What the label costs a buyer |
|---|---|---|
| Mandarin goby | A dragonet, Callionymidae | A goby usually takes prepared food. This does not |
| Least killifish | A livebearer, Poeciliidae | Killifish are published for water more acidic than rain. This wants 7.0 to 8.0 |
| Celestial pearl danio | A danio, sold as a galaxy rasbora | Least costly of the three: the care is broadly similar either way |
All three of our sources correct the name. Wikipedia places the species in the perciform family Callionymidae, the dragonets, and gives the reason the wrong name stuck: the fish has a body shape similar to a goby. Fishkeeping World: it is commonly called the mandarin goby because its body shape is similar to that of a goby fish.
On the other two records on this site with the same defect, the label is misleading. Here it is dangerous. Our celestial pearl danio record is a danio sold as a rasbora, and the care sheets for the two groups are broadly compatible. Our least killifish record is worse, because true killifish are published for acidic water and that fish wants pH 7.0 to 8.0. This one is worse again, because the difference between a goby and a dragonet is the difference between a fish that eats what you give it and a fish that mostly does not.
Wikipedia adds one more piece of anatomy that separates it from anything else on this site. The fish has no scales. Instead it carries a layer of debatably smelly and bitter slime that blocks out disease and probably also discourages predators. That is a defense and a coating in one, and it is the only record here whose skin is described as a chemical rather than a structure.
On aggression the sources are mild and specific. Aquarium Store Depot says mandarins are problematic with other gobies and blennies because of territorial aggression, and Fishkeeping World that males should be kept in separate tanks because they exhibit territorial aggression. Read that first refusal against station 01 and it is a competition problem rather than a temperament one: gobies and blennies are the fish that hunt the same copepods, so on a fish whose food has to be cultured a rival is worse than an enemy.
What it is cleared for is everything gentler. Fishkeeping World names pajama cardinalfish, clownfish, gobies and dartfish as compatible, which sits oddly beside Store Depot’s refusal of gobies, and Store Depot answers the reef question without hedging: yes, mandarin gobies are very reef-safe. A fish that eats copepods off rock has no interest in coral.
Expert or intermediate, and the two ratings are measuring different things
Aquarium Store Depot rates this fish expert and calls it one of the hardest fish that can be kept in the aquarium setting. Fishkeeping World rates it intermediate, while noting it is unsuitable for beginners because of its demanding diet. Wikipedia sits between them and explains why both are defensible: the species is considered difficult to keep, as their feeding habits are very specific.
Nothing about the water is difficult, and that is the whole of the disagreement. The temperature band is six degrees wide, the pH is standard reef at 8.1 to 8.4, the salinity is standard reef at 1.025, the fish is peaceful and it is reef-safe. Judged on parameters, intermediate is a fair rating and this record would agree with it.
Judged on the food, it is not. The difficulty here is not a skill problem, it is an infrastructure problem, and Store Depot states it as a requirement rather than a technique: a tank running twelve months with a visible copepod population, plus a refugium or a separate culture. A fish you cannot buy for a year and cannot feed from a jar is an expert fish however easy its water is, and rating it intermediate invites exactly the purchase that kills it. This record follows the harder rating for that reason.
The lifespan row is the evidence that the harder rating is the honest one. Fishkeeping World is the only source that publishes a figure and it publishes two: 2 to 4 years in captivity, up to 15 years in the wild. A captive lifespan a quarter of the wild one is not a neutral fact on a fish this hard to feed.
That is the widest captive-to-wild gap on this site, and it is worth setting against the record that runs the other way. Our least killifish record gives up to 1.5 years in a tank against a wild maximum of 120 to 150 days, so captivity roughly triples it. Here captivity divides by four. The two records bracket what a tank can do to an animal, and the variable in both cases is food: the killifish is easy to feed and the mandarin is not.
On prepared food the two care sources agree and both hedge in the same direction, and the hedge is the most useful sentence on this page. Store Depot: some hobbyists have had mandarins accept regular flakes and pellets, but this is very rare. Fishkeeping World: captive mandarin fish are picky eaters and rarely accept frozen or prepared foods, though some mandarin fish, especially captive-bred fish, can be gradually transitioned onto pellets. So wild caught or captive bred is the question that decides the whole feeding regime, and it is the one thing to ask a retailer before anything else.
The full record
| Field | Recorded | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum tank | 30 gal | Both aquarium sources give 30 gallons and Fishkeeping World gives the second figure that matters: at least 75 gallons for a pair of mandarin fish. Aquarium Store Depot gives 30 gallons, 113 liters, as the minimum. The volume is not really about swimming space, it is about how many copepods the tank can grow, which is the argument in the diet row and the reason the twelve month rule exists. A pair needs more than double the tank because a pair needs more than double the food, and the food has to be produced inside the system rather than added to it. Fishkeeping World adds the reason a pair is the maximum anyway: males should be kept in separate tanks because they exhibit territorial aggression. |
| Temperature | 76 to 82 °F | Two bands and they meet across six degrees. Aquarium Store Depot gives 76 to 82 F, 24 to 28 C. Fishkeeping World is wider at 72 to 84 F, 22 to 28 C. The row prints the 76 to 82 both contain. Wikipedia publishes no temperature and places the fish in sheltered lagoons and inshore reefs in warmer Pacific waters from the Ryukyu Islands to Australia. That band sits five degrees above the floor on our damselfish record, which is 73 to 81, so the two marine records here overlap from 76 to 81 and a tank holding both has a five degree window rather than a free choice. |
| pH | 8.1 to 8.4 | Fishkeeping World gives alkaline, 8.1 to 8.4 pH. Aquarium Store Depot gives 8.0 to 8.4. The row prints the span both contain, which is Fishkeeping World’s figure and is identical to our damselfish record. Those two records now share the highest pH floor on this site, at 8.1, above our black molly and nerite snail records at 7.5. Reef water sits there because it is buffered by carbonate, and it is the shortest explanation for why the pairings grid refuses both of these records against every freshwater record on the site before it compares anything else. |
| Hardness | Specific gravity 1.025 | As on our damselfish record, this row carries salinity where every freshwater record here carries hardness, because the density question in salt water is salt rather than dissolved calcium and magnesium. Aquarium Store Depot gives a single figure, 1.025, 35 PPT. Fishkeeping World gives 1.023 to 1.025. The only value both contain is 1.025, so that is the row, and the range beside it is named rather than used. Neither publishes a general hardness figure and neither should. For comparison our damselfish record carries 1.020 to 1.025, so the two marine records meet only at the top of the damselfish range, which is the same shape as the temperature row above: these two fish can share water, and the window is narrow at both ends. |
| Adult size | 2.4 to 3 in | Three sources and the reference source is the smallest. Wikipedia: the fish reaches only about 6 cm, which is 2.4 inches. Aquarium Store Depot gives 3 inches, 7.6 cm. Fishkeeping World gives up to 3 inches. The row spans all three. Two and a half to three inches is a small fish for a 30 gallon tank, and the volume in the tank row is not about the animal’s size at all: it is the surface area and maturity needed to grow the food. That inversion is unusual on this site. On almost every other record here the tank figure tracks the fish; on this one it tracks the fish’s dinner. |
| Diet | Live copepods, almost exclusively | This is the row the whole record turns on, and Fishkeeping World supplies the number that makes it real: the fish can eat one copepod every 5 to 10 seconds, with most fish consuming up to a few thousand copepods daily. Aquarium Store Depot types it carnivore, copepods and small invertebrates, and says these fish eat almost exclusively live copepods. Wikipedia gives the wild diet in full and every item on it is a small benthic animal: harpacticoid copepods, polychaete worms, small gastropods, gammaridean amphipods, fish eggs and ostracods, with feeding continuous during daylight. On prepared food the two care sources agree and both hedge. Store Depot: some hobbyists have had mandarins accept regular flakes and pellets, but this is very rare. Fishkeeping World: captive mandarin fish are picky eaters and rarely accept frozen or prepared foods, though some mandarin fish, especially captive-bred fish, can be gradually transitioned onto pellets. So the honest reading is that a wild-caught mandarin should be assumed to need live food and a captive-bred one may not, and that is the single most useful question to ask a retailer about this fish. |
| Water column | The bottom, and it walks on it | Wikipedia states it outright, and the answer is stranger than a layer: the large pelvic fins are used for walking on the seafloor and are often mistakenly seen as the pectoral fins. The fish does not swim above the substrate, it walks on it. That also confirms what the diet implies. Every animal on Wikipedia’s wild diet list lives on or in the substrate: harpacticoid copepods, polychaete worms, small gastropods, gammaridean amphipods and ostracods are all benthic, and a fish feeding on them continuously through daylight is a fish working over rock and sand. Wikipedia places the species in sheltered lagoons and inshore reefs. That is also why the refugium in the kit list matters more than a feeding schedule: the food has to be growing on the surfaces the fish hunts, not floating past it, which is the exact opposite of our vampire shrimp record, where the food has to be in the current and the animal stays put. |
| Lifespan | 2 to 4 years | One source of three publishes a lifespan and it publishes two, which is the more interesting result. Fishkeeping World: 2 to 4 years in captivity, up to 15 years in the wild. That is a factor of almost four between a tank and a reef, and it is the widest such gap on this site: our least killifish record runs the other way, with 1.5 years in a tank against 120 to 150 days in the wild. Aquarium Store Depot publishes no lifespan and neither does Wikipedia. A captive figure a quarter of the wild one is not a neutral fact on a fish this hard to feed, and this record prints the 2 to 4 as the row because that is what a keeper should plan for, with the 15 named beside it as what the animal is capable of. |
| Growth rate | Not recorded yet | Not stated by any of the three. Fishkeeping World gives an adult size of up to 3 in and a lifespan of three to four years and nothing between them, Aquarium Store Depot writes about feeding and pod culture instead, and Wikipedia covers the species without a growth figure anywhere. It is the same gap our damselfish record carries, and on both marine records it is the only row left empty. |
The same nine fields for every animal on this site are in the A to Z index.
Where our sources disagree
Every record here names a disagreement. On this one two sources rate the same fish at two different difficulty levels.
Aquarium Store Depot, on difficulty
Expert; one of the hardest fish that can be kept in the aquarium setting
Fishkeeping World, on the same fish
Intermediate care level
Wikipedia, on the reason either rating is defensible
considered difficult to keep, as their feeding habits are very specific
What we record: we follow Aquarium Store Depot and treat this as an expert fish, and the reason is that the two ratings are measuring different things. Nothing about the water is difficult.
The temperature band is six degrees wide, the pH is standard reef, the salinity is standard reef, and the fish is peaceful and, on Store Depot, very reef-safe. Judged on parameters, intermediate is a fair rating.
The difficulty is entirely the food, and it is not a skill problem, it is an infrastructure problem. Store Depot states the requirement as a date rather than a technique: do not buy a mandarin goby until your tank has been established for at least 12 months with a healthy, visible copepod population, and it adds that a mature tank cannot sustain the consumption rate on its own, so you need either a refugium under the display tank or a separate culture of a fast-reproducing species such as Tigriopus or Tisbe.
A fish you cannot buy for a year and cannot feed from a jar is an expert fish however easy its water is, and rating it intermediate invites exactly the purchase that kills it.
The two marine records here, and the narrow window where they meet
| Row | Mandarin goby | Damselfish | Where they meet |
|---|---|---|---|
| Temperature | 76 to 82 °F | 73 to 81 °F | 76 to 81 |
| pH | 8.1 to 8.4 | 8.1 to 8.4 | The whole row, identically |
| Specific gravity | 1.025 | 1.020 to 1.025 | 1.025 only, the top of one range |
| Tank | 30 gal | 30 gal | Both |
| Adult size | 2.4 to 3 in | 3 in, and 12 for the largest | Comparable, for the small species |
| Temperament | Peaceful, reef-safe | Territorial, nearly impossible to remove | Not a pairing this record would make |
Two marine records is enough to compare and not enough to index: the saltwater silo holds two records and this site noindexes a silo below three, so the archive page stays out of search until a third arrives while both records index normally. That is the rule working as designed rather than a gap.
On water the two are compatible and the window is narrower than either row suggests. The pH matches exactly. The temperature overlaps from 76 to 81, five degrees. The salinity meets at a single value, because this record carries a flat 1.025 and our damselfish record carries 1.020 to 1.025. So a tank holding both is a tank held at the top of the damselfish range.
On temperament they are not compatible, and the reason is the last row. Our damselfish record carries Aquarium Store Depot’s summary of that fish, easy to add and nearly impossible to remove, and Fishkeeping World’s observation that a damsel will chase and nip at subordinate fish that enter its patch. A mandarin goby is a slow, peaceful fish that spends the day picking food off rock, which is a precise description of a subordinate fish in a damsel’s patch.
There is a second and quieter reason, and it is the one station 02 raises. A damselfish is an omnivore that will eat just about anything you feed them, on its own record’s source. In a tank whose copepod population is being cultured as the mandarin’s only reliable food, an opportunistic omnivore working the same rock is a competitor. The pairing fails on food before it fails on temper.
So the honest answer for anyone building a marine tank from these two records is that they can share water and should not share a tank, and our tank mates grid prints the overlap and the caution separately. What both records refuse outright is every freshwater record on this site, which the grid now says before it compares any band.
What the sources actually ask you to build, and it is a second tank
Read the requirements in order and this stops being a fish purchase. First, twelve months. Aquarium Store Depot: do not buy a mandarin goby until your tank has been established for at least 12 months with a healthy, visible copepod population. Not a mature tank, a mature tank with a population you can see.
Second, a place for the copepods to breed faster than the fish eats them. Store Depot says a mature tank cannot sustain the consumption rate alone and gives two options: a refugium underneath the display tank, or a separate tank to grow and culture copepods using fast-reproducing species like Tigriopus and Tisbe. Both are additional systems, and the arithmetic in station 01 is why: a few thousand copepods a day is a production rate rather than a feeding.
Third, the provenance. Because a captive-bred mandarin may transition onto pellets and a wild-caught one probably will not, the same fish is either a difficult purchase or an impossible one depending on where it came from, and no source we hold can tell you which any given animal is.
What that adds up to is the clearest example on this site of a fish whose difficulty lives outside the tank it sits in. Compare our vampire shrimp record, which has the opposite version of the same problem: that animal also cannot be spot-fed and also needs food it does not chase, but its food arrives in the current from a pump, so the solution is equipment. Here the food has to be alive and reproducing on the surfaces the fish hunts, so the solution is time and a second system.
Wikipedia adds the ecological reason a tank struggles to reproduce this. The species lives in sheltered lagoons and inshore reefs and feeds continuously during daylight hours on six named kinds of small benthic animal. A reef flat is a standing crop that regenerates faster than one small fish can crop it. A thirty gallon tank is not, unless something else is growing the crop.
None of this makes the fish a bad animal to keep, and it is worth saying because the record has spent five stations on the difficulty. It is peaceful, it is reef-safe on both sources that address it, it needs no unusual water, and Fishkeeping World rates breeding difficult, but not impossible, with external fertilization at the surface. What it needs is to be bought last rather than first, which is exactly what our damselfish record says about a fish at the other end of the difficulty scale, for entirely different reasons.
One of two vertebrates that are blue on purpose, and a fish that walks
Almost every blue animal is blue by accident of physics: structure in the skin or feather scatters light and the pigment underneath is doing something else. Wikipedia records that this fish is not one of them. S. splendidus is one of only two vertebrate species known to have blue colouring because of cellular pigment, carried in cells for which the term cyanophore was proposed, meaning the blue chromatophores, or pigment-containing and light-reflecting cells.
That is the most unusual single fact on any record on this site, and it is worth knowing why the fish looks the way it does rather than merely that it does. The description: the vivid coloration sports a bright blue background, with swirly orange stripes and a blue-greenish face with bold blue stripes. The dorsal fin carries a striking orange-and blue design as well.
The colour forms in the trade are the same animal. Wikipedia: the green mandarin is the fish that has been described. The red mandarin is the same species, but its pelvic fins and what would be orange is red. So green mandarin and red mandarin are not two species and not two care sheets, which puts them in the same category as the six koi betta names on our koi betta fish guide: trade names for arrangements of one animal.
The name list is longer than the fish. Wikipedia gives eight: mandarinfish, mandarin dragonet, mandarin goby, green mandarin, striped mandarinfish, striped dragonet, green dragonet, and psychedelic mandarinfish. Three of those eight say dragonet, which is correct, and one says goby, which is not, and the wrong one is the one the shops use.
Sexing it is one feature and it is the most visible one on the fish. The dorsal fin, which is exceptionally tall in males, carries the orange and blue design. That is the whole of the published sexual dimorphism across our three sources, and it is enough: a mandarin with a long first dorsal is a male, which matters because Fishkeeping World says males should be kept in separate tanks because they exhibit territorial aggression.
And one line settles the layer row on this record, which station 01 had to read off the diet rather than off a statement. The large pelvic fins are used for walking on the seafloor and are often mistakenly seen as the pectoral fins. So the fish does not swim over the substrate, it walks on it, which is exactly what an animal picking harpacticoid copepods off rock all day needs to do, and it is the strongest possible confirmation that the food has to be growing where the fish is standing.
Mandarin goby questions, answered from the record
Is a mandarin goby a goby?
No. It is a dragonet, and all three of our sources say so. Wikipedia places Synchiropus splendidus in the perciform family Callionymidae, the dragonets, and gives the reason for the name: it has a body shape similar to a goby. That makes this the third record on this site whose shop label names the wrong family, and the one where it costs the most: a goby will usually take prepared food and a dragonet mostly will not.
What do mandarin gobies eat?
Live copepods, and a few thousand a day. Fishkeeping World: the fish can eat one copepod every 5 to 10 seconds, with most fish consuming up to a few thousand copepods daily. Aquarium Store Depot: almost exclusively live copepods. Wikipedia gives the wild diet as harpacticoid copepods, polychaete worms, small gastropods, gammaridean amphipods, fish eggs and ostracods, eaten continuously through daylight.
Will a mandarin goby eat frozen or pellet food?
Rarely, and the answer probably depends on where the fish came from. Aquarium Store Depot: some hobbyists have had mandarins accept regular flakes and pellets, but this is very rare. Fishkeeping World: captive mandarin fish are picky eaters and rarely accept frozen or prepared foods, though some mandarin fish, especially captive-bred fish, can be gradually transitioned onto pellets. Wild caught or captive bred is the question to ask a retailer before any other.
How long should a tank be running before buying a mandarin goby?
Twelve months, and it is the only purchase instruction on this site expressed as a date. Aquarium Store Depot: do not buy a mandarin goby until your tank has been established for at least 12 months with a healthy, visible copepod population. It adds that even a mature tank cannot sustain the consumption rate alone, so you also need a refugium or a separate copepod culture.
Do you need a refugium for a mandarin goby?
One or the other, on the source that addresses it. Aquarium Store Depot asks for either a refugium underneath the display tank or a separate tank to grow and culture copepods using fast-reproducing species like Tigriopus and Tisbe. The reason is the rate in the first answer above: a few thousand copepods a day is a production figure rather than a feeding schedule, so something has to be producing them.
What size tank does a mandarin goby need?
30 gallons for one, 75 for a pair, and the volume is about the food rather than the fish. Both care sources give 30 as the minimum and Fishkeeping World asks for at least 75 gallons for a pair. The fish itself is 2.4 to 3 inches. On almost every other record on this site the tank figure tracks the animal; on this one it tracks how many copepods the system can grow.
Is a mandarin goby hard to keep?
Our two care sources disagree, and they are measuring different things. Aquarium Store Depot rates it expert and one of the hardest fish that can be kept in the aquarium setting. Fishkeeping World rates it intermediate. Nothing about the water is difficult: six degree band, standard reef pH and salinity, peaceful, reef-safe. The difficulty is entirely the food, and it is infrastructure rather than skill. This record follows the harder rating, because rating it intermediate invites the purchase that kills it.
How long do mandarin gobies live?
2 to 4 years in a tank, and up to 15 in the wild. Fishkeeping World is the only source that publishes a figure and it publishes both. A captive lifespan a quarter of the wild one is not a neutral fact on a fish this hard to feed, and it is the widest captive-to-wild gap on this site. Our least killifish record runs the other way, with captivity roughly tripling the wild figure.
What water does a mandarin goby need?
76 to 82 °F, pH 8.1 to 8.4, specific gravity 1.025. The temperature is the span both published bands contain, Aquarium Store Depot giving 76 to 82 and Fishkeeping World 72 to 84. On salinity Store Depot gives a flat 1.025, 35 PPT, and Fishkeeping World 1.023 to 1.025, so the only value both contain is 1.025. That pH floor of 8.1 ties our damselfish record for the highest on this site.
Can a mandarin goby live with a damselfish?
They can share water and should not share a tank. The pH matches exactly, the temperature overlaps from 76 to 81, and the salinity meets at 1.025. But our damselfish record carries a fish its own source calls nearly impossible to remove that will chase and nip at subordinate fish, and a mandarin is a slow peaceful fish picking food off rock. It also fails on food before it fails on temper: a damsel is an omnivore working the same rock the copepods live on.
Can a mandarin goby live with freshwater fish?
No, and our pairings grid refuses it before comparing anything. This is a marine fish at pH 8.1 to 8.4 and specific gravity 1.025. The tank mates page now refuses a marine record against a freshwater one before it looks at temperature at all, because a shared band there would be misleading rather than merely incomplete.
Does a mandarin goby have scales?
No, and what it has instead is unusual enough that Wikipedia describes it twice over. The fish carries a layer of debatably smelly and bitter slime in place of scales, which blocks out disease and probably also discourages predators. It is the only record on this site whose skin is described as a chemical rather than a structure.
Are mandarin gobies reef safe?
Yes, without hedging. Aquarium Store Depot: yes, mandarin gobies are very reef-safe. A fish that spends the day picking copepods off rock has no interest in coral. What it is not safe with is competition: Store Depot says mandarins are problematic with other gobies and blennies because of territorial aggression, and those are the fish that hunt the same copepods.
How many mandarin gobies can you keep together?
One, or a pair in 75 gallons, and never two males. Fishkeeping World gives both: a pair needs at least 75 gallons, and males should be kept in separate tanks because they exhibit territorial aggression. The larger tank for a pair is the food argument again rather than a space one, since two fish eating a few thousand copepods a day each need a system producing them.
What does a mandarin goby look like?
Blue with orange stripes, and the blue is unusual enough to be a scientific fact. Wikipedia: the vivid coloration sports a bright blue background, with swirly orange stripes and a blue-greenish face with bold blue stripes, and S. splendidus is one of only two vertebrate species known to have blue colouring because of cellular pigment, held in cells called cyanophore. Almost every other blue animal is blue by structure rather than by pigment.
What is the difference between a green mandarin and a red mandarin?
Nothing but the color. They are the same species. Wikipedia: the green mandarin is the fish that has been described. The red mandarin is the same species, but its pelvic fins and what would be orange is red. No source we hold publishes a different care figure for either, which puts them in the same category as the six koi betta trade names on our koi betta fish guide.
How do you tell a male mandarin goby from a female?
By the dorsal fin, and it is the only sexing feature our sources publish. Wikipedia: the dorsal fin, which is exceptionally tall in males, has a striking orange-and blue design as well. It matters because Fishkeeping World says males should be kept in separate tanks because they exhibit territorial aggression, so a pair means one long dorsal and one short.
Does a mandarin goby swim or walk?
It walks, and Wikipedia says so directly: the large pelvic fins are used for walking on the seafloor and are often mistakenly seen as the pectoral fins. That confirms what the diet implies, because an animal picking benthic copepods off rock all day needs to be on the rock rather than above it, and it is why the food has to be growing where the fish is standing rather than drifting past.
Why do mandarin gobies die?
Our sources point at one cause and it is starvation rather than disease. Wikipedia: they are considered difficult to keep, as their feeding habits are very specific, and many refuse to eat anything but live amphipods and copepods. A fish eating a few thousand copepods a day in a tank that produces fewer is losing weight from the day it arrives, which is why the twelve month rule and the refugium are stated as requirements rather than as recommendations.
What a mandarin goby needs that no other record here does
One of these is a second tank, and one of them is a year of waiting.
- A refugium, or a copepod cultureAquarium Store Depot says a mature tank cannot sustain the consumption rate alone and asks for a refugium under the display tank or a separate culture of a fast-reproducing species such as Tigriopus or Tisbe
- Twelve months of tank, before the fishdo not buy one until the tank has been established for at least 12 months with a healthy, visible copepod population, which is the only purchase instruction on this site expressed as a date
- A retailer who knows the provenanceboth care sources say prepared food is rarely accepted, and Fishkeeping World notes that captive-bred fish especially can be gradually transitioned onto pellets, so wild caught or captive bred is the question that decides the feeding regime
Every item our records ask for is gathered on the tank setup topic.
Nothing here is a paid link. It is the shortfall between what this record asks for and what a boxed kit contains.
How this record was compiled
- By
- Verified
- Sources
Aquarium Store Depot, mandarin goby, Fishkeeping World, mandarin fish and Wikipedia, Synchiropus splendidus
- Conflicts
Printed rather than resolved: Aquarium Store Depot rates this fish Expert and one of the hardest that can be kept where Fishkeeping World rates it Intermediate; the adult size runs from about 6 cm on Wikipedia to 3 inches on both care sources; and the specific gravity is a single figure of 1.025 on one source against a range of 1.023 to 1.025 on the other.
- Blanks
Growth rate stay empty until a source we trust states them
- Not recorded
A growth rate, because no source we hold publishes one; a lifespan from two of the three sources; a general hardness figure, because the salinity row carries specific gravity in its place; and whether any individual fish is wild caught or captive bred, which is the one question that decides whether it will take prepared food