Can I put a blue mandarin with dwarf seahorses?
 

First off I'd like to apologize for being a little wordy, I just want to give as much information as possible to get the best advice as possible.

The tl;Dr is basically: can I put a blue mandarin in a 10 gallon dwarf seahorse tank safely for about 6 months.

The long story starts with A little back story.

I've had a blue mandarin in my reef tank for quite some time now. He happily accepts all sorts of frozen food, but as I've added more fish to the tank I've noticed he's getting out competed for food and starting to lose weight. I know i made a huge mistake purchasing him without an established copepod population but at this point i just wanna do what's best for my fish with rehoming being a last option as that would mean taking it back to the lfs. I'm already pushing my limits on feeding which is causing a lot of algae that I happily deal with for this fella as he is my favorite fish.

Anyway, I'm going to build a 15 gallon sump/refugium. It's only going to hold a heater, my protein skimmer, and room for a small reactor when I need it and the rest will be the refugium to grow pods. Obviously I'm gonna seed the system but it's still going to need time to be able to support a blue mandarin.

the only two options I have to house the guy in the time being are
1) to put him in a finnex breeder box which is maybe half a gallon but at least cycles aquarium water through it via an air driven system. This is very far from ideal, but can at least keep him alive for the time being.
2) to put him in a 10 gallon dwarf seahorse tank where he can feast on bbs and enriched week old brine in addition to supplement with frozen. This option gives him a little wiggle room but I have no idea how he would behave around my ponies, especially the babies.

What do you guys suggest I do?

I'd go with option 2 and try to get your hands on some live pods and mysis. Fellow local reefers parting out excess cheato which may be full of pods is a cheap option.

Putting him with the dwarves would be a disaster for the tiny seahorses. Not a good idea at all in my opinion, especially with fry in the tank.


If you don't have a quarantine tank I would suggest you set one up just for the mandarin. You could easily house him in a 10 gallon tank and not risk the lives of all your dwarves.

They require a 50 gallon tank with mature fuge. They're voracious.

I don't know if op has come back to the forum or not but here is a thread detailing how to feed mandarins baby brine shrimp. If you don't have enough pods, you need a feeder like this (since mandarins feed off the substrate and not out of the water column).
http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2166449