Many people have great luck keeping them. I suggest at least 100 lbs of live rock. Their main diet consists of pods. So you will have to be able to provide enough of them for it to feed. Another way to provide pods would be to have a refugium with lots of macro algae and maybe alot of rock rubble.
Can you cold water dip a manderin fish before you put it in your tank? I dont want to put it in my hospital tank because there is no refugium or live rock.
I think if you observe the fish you can tell if it has disease or not.....just take your time and buy a healthy fish. I am not too sure about this particular fish having a problem with disease.(and im not saying they dont either). the only problems that are frequently discussed on this fish would be the availibility of pods so it doesnt starve.
jasonh how old is your system ? If it's under a year old I would recommend you wait till you have an established tank since young tanks have a tedency to have fluctutions so the pod population will rise and fall until the tank stabilizes and a manderin can wipe out a pod population very quickly. A refugium with macro algea would be a good source of pods to keep a manderin happy and healthy long term.
Manderins have a very poor survival record because it's very difficult to get them to eat anything but live foods and they will usually starve to death but in the right system that's established with plenty of Live Rock they can do very well.
If you're interested here's a couple of great articles on Manderins:
You can supplement the pods with live brine shrimp, but should feed the brine shrimp selcon or zoecon before putting it in the tank. I've been keeping a mandarin for about four months in a tank that is approximately one year old with an HOB fuge and giving him live brine once or twice a week. So far, he looks fat and happy.
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