Mandarins eating prepared foods...Dream or Reality?
- Thread starter EllisJuan
- Start date
aquaph8
Love The Fish
Ora did come out with captive bred Mandarins. Wether they eat prepared food or not is hit or miss. I think some Mandarins do eat prepared foods. They just scavenge it off the rocks during their hunts instead of eat it out of the water colum like other fish. Either way I would reccommend a fuge where your pod population can breed and multiply in peace.
Manarins are dragonets not gobies. While most will eat frozen mysis, they are such notoriously poor hunters that unless you spot feed them multiple times per day you cannot sustain them without sufficient copepods.
Lynnmw1208
New member
+1 I got mine to eat mysis and mine is wild caught. saying this, it was used to eating live brine at the LFS and I used that to my advantage and spot fed it with a sea squirt until it got used to food coming from that. now I sneak in some mysis in between but she still would rather have live brine. if you do this, make sure the live brine is fed with phytoplan to give it nutrition as they don't really have much nutrition in them without it. I also have a large pod population but I like to supplemental feed to be sure cuz I love this fish so much. good luck if you decide to try.
namxas
Things With Stings R Us!
I kept a mandy for 8 years that pretty much ate everything after awhile, however, in its last few months it got more picky.
A good food to get them eating is live blackworms, however, use them sparingly as they die quickly in SW. Live gutloaded Artemia is also a good food for them. You can also feed them live copepods, but be sure the pods you buy are demersal, such as Tisbe sp.. "Tigger" pods (Tigriopus californicus) are a swimming species which also don't reproduce well above above 68*F, so they're hard for mandies to catch.
HTH
A good food to get them eating is live blackworms, however, use them sparingly as they die quickly in SW. Live gutloaded Artemia is also a good food for them. You can also feed them live copepods, but be sure the pods you buy are demersal, such as Tisbe sp.. "Tigger" pods (Tigriopus californicus) are a swimming species which also don't reproduce well above above 68*F, so they're hard for mandies to catch.
HTH
PatrickB101
Premium Member
I had a good friend that had one that would swim to the top of the tank and eat just about any food you put into the tank, frozen brine he went nuts for. Sadly, due to a failure of a part the ozone stayed on way to long and killed everything in his tank. Was sad, I had only seen a few mandarians as fat as he was in captivity.
I got mine from the LFS not eating frozen foods. Within 3 days of being in my tank, cruising around eating Pods, he spotted some 'Marine Green' fish food at the bottom of the tank and went over and gobbled it all up. He now comes to the front at feeding time. He's my only bottom dweller though so no competition. He can take his time looking at it before eating.
I have a scooter blenny that is from the same family of dragonets. He eats Spectrum pellets like there is no tomorrow. He is about 3" long and quite a character. I have tried Mandarins twice by now and neither one lasted more than two weeks. Last one developed a sort of white spot on the skin and fins started rotting. Died in a few days after. I suspect collection method plays a substantial role in success.
cheers,
MaLi
cheers,
MaLi
