Can you overfeed Mandarins?

[Alexraptor]

Ok, I might get a bit of flack for this, but I have a nice little Mandarin female in a mature 10g tank.
Its a high nutrient skimmerless tank with loads and loads of pods, a population which she has not even put a dent in.

Despite a seemingly stable pod population I decided to get her on frozen foods and met with instant success with lobster/prawn eggs.
She went from being a scrawny underourished thing to being nice and plump in a little over a month.

However, what I want to know is, can you actually "overfeed" mandarins and dragonets as a whole?
At the moment I supplement her diet with a few shavings of eggs from a frozen cube, twice a day(morning and evening), which she usually finishes in like 15-20 minutes average.

Still very camera shy, so I can only put the camera on and walk out of the room, this is what she looks like now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lO8d4LshaI

 

[HumbleFish]

My understanding is Mandarins don't have much of a stomach - they burn it off almost as fast as they take it in - so it's probably impossible to overfeed them. However, it is very possible to pollute your 10 gal tank by feeding too much ova.

 

[Betta132]

As long as you keep the tank clean, no, they can't be overfed. Most fish can, but the ones who really need a lot of food can't be overfed at all.

 

[GT350pwns]

How long have you had her?

 

[Alexraptor]

Good to know.
And funny enough I find it a challenge to keep nutrient levels high enough in the tank to sustain macroalgal and microalgal growth.
Before I added fish to the tank I actually had to throw in extra food to keep things going.

And ive had her for a little over a month, the last week of which i started supplementing with eggs, pod population still going strong.

 

[GT350pwns]

Good to know.
And funny enough I find it a challenge to keep nutrient levels high enough in the tank to sustain macroalgal and microalgal growth.
Before I added fish to the tank I actually had to throw in extra food to keep things going.

And ive had her for a little over a month, the last week of which i started supplementing with eggs, pod population still going strong.

alright. been considering one for my 36 gal. would be a few months before I could add one, but I've been so concerned with all of the mixed opinions I've been getting.

 

[arnoldrew]

If the copepod population is stable, I would guess it's becasue she's not eating them. They can eat 1000s of pod a day. "Pecking" is not the same as eating. They also can take a while to starve.

 

[Alexraptor]

Somehow I highly doubt Mandarins magically gain weight by not eating.

She was a scrawny very undernourished thing when I got her, concave belly, borderline starvation lines.
And since I got her she was putting on weight even before i started supplementing with ova which is only in the last week alone.

 

[MondoBongo]

alright. been considering one for my 36 gal. would be a few months before I could add one, but I've been so concerned with all of the mixed opinions I've been getting.

it can certainly be done, but it gets orders of magnitude more difficult in smaller tanks.

my personal observation is that a 75 gallon with a good amount of live rock, and good supplemental feeding is an excellent base line. it gives you a good chance of survival and a buffer should they not readily go to prepared or frozen foods.

it also depends on your experience level and dedication. obviously the more experience you have, the easier it will be. i know that personally i wouldn't have had success with a mandy earlier. my tank wasn't stable enough, and i wasn't knowledgeable enough.

it's a good rule of thumb too to treat the frozen food as strictly supplemental. expect that their primary food source will be live zooplankton. anything else they eat is just a bonus. that way if they don't like frozen, or decide at any point to stop eating it, they will still get their food source.

have you looked at any of the other feeding threads about these guys? here are a couple of my standard links i spam (apologies if any of these are rehash for you):

http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2367532
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2363996
http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2374330


to the OP, in regards to over feeding, my only thought would be fatty liver disease. granted i don't know enough about mandarin nutrition, or more generally marine nutrition, to give you a conclusive answer, but it is a thought. i'd be interested to see if there were any reference materials out there related to this. i've found precious few studies on Synchiropus sp.

 

[dukduk]

If a mandarin is picking at rocks, glass, etc does it mean it's feeding? Like for sure it sees a pod and it chomping it down?

 

[arnoldrew]

If a mandarin is picking at rocks, glass, etc does it mean it's feeding? Like for sure it sees a pod and it chomping it down?

No. It's a good sign, but many of them "peck" without actually swallowing any food.

 

[dukduk]

Dang, you'd think with the way their eyes are tracking about that they are actually hunting and eating instead of wasting energy wildly pecking around.

 

[syrinx]

Generally speaking, an underfed animal lives a longer life than a overfed animal. As long as it is not obese I woulnt worry too much about it though- and it is not going to get obese in a month. One point about the pods- not all pods are created equal, and some of the larger ones are not taken as often by smaller dragonettes.