Mandarine's are very pretty fish. In my opinion, after having several in varied tanks, with a pair now, its not so much the size of the tank, but the NUMBER OF PODS in the tank. Make sure you have plenty of LR and LS. Then let the tank mature. After about 6 months, which might seem like a long time, there should be plently of pods. The way to check is to look with a flashlight right after the lights go out(it helps to feed a few minutes before lights go out and check 10 minutes after that) at where the rock meets the sand in low flow areas. They should be scurring around everywhere. Your sand also must be full of life, containing plenty of amphipods. The best way to get pods in a fuge or the main tank is to get rock rubble and make some piles of it. Wether in your fuge or main tank they should start reproducing like crazy. After some careful observation after the tank has matured, if you see enough(tons) of pods, i would consider it safe to have one. Just watch him, make sure he stays plump, and offer live or frozen brine and
mysid shrimp. If he doesn't do well(which you should be able to make the right decision before getting him), then a 40 gallon is small enough to catch him and find an adequate home.
In conclusion, just do what you can to grow them in the fuge and main, and watch to see how many there are. Also, in the fuge, if you can build the fuge over the tank, and let it
gravity feed into the tank, the pods won't get cut up by the propellers of the pumps. If not, then do a search for pumps that have a low likely hood of cutting them up(there are plenty of those pumps out there) Hope this helps.
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Austin
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