my mandarin eats pellets now!
- Thread starter mitch303
- Start date
.pmrossetti
Active member
so how'd you do it?
snorvich- i know he need to eat copepods i have a good amount in my refugium and my mandarin is pretty fat hasnt lost weight at all. so i think its good that he eats other stuff and not just copepods. i would disagree about competing with other fish when my clowns and chromis come to the tube when he is eating he kind of chases them away and comes right back to the tube to eat so he really doesnt need to competethe food gets put right in front of his face.
pmrossetti- i started out by using one of those syringe type things you get in the pharmacy section at grocery stores and connected a piece of airline tubing to the end of it, i then suck up the fod into the syringe and stick the end of the tube right by his face and push the food out. i started with live brine and once he got used to that switched to frozen mysis it took him a couple days to start eating the mysis. then i started with other stuff such as cyclops and frozen brine. now i have been doing pellets for the last couple days and he just started eating those today. now he know when ts feeding time and will come straight to the tube when i stick it in the water and sits at the end of the tube eating everything that comes out.
pmrossetti- i started out by using one of those syringe type things you get in the pharmacy section at grocery stores and connected a piece of airline tubing to the end of it, i then suck up the fod into the syringe and stick the end of the tube right by his face and push the food out. i started with live brine and once he got used to that switched to frozen mysis it took him a couple days to start eating the mysis. then i started with other stuff such as cyclops and frozen brine. now i have been doing pellets for the last couple days and he just started eating those today. now he know when ts feeding time and will come straight to the tube when i stick it in the water and sits at the end of the tube eating everything that comes out.
seahorsedreams
New member
Very good news. Get him to eat a bit of everything (frozen) and they will not rely on the pods so much. Mine lived for 8 years on frozen with very minimal pods, as he was in competition with a wrasse and a pipefish.
Mine stopped grazing and started swimming with the other fish for food.
Mine stopped grazing and started swimming with the other fish for food.
yea i tried the mandarin diner before this method and it did not work, My cuc and my lawnmower blenny would eat all the food before he even noticed it was in there. so i saw this method on a different forum and thought i would give it a try and it has worked perfectly ever since. He knows when that tube hits the water its feeding time.
el aguila- Let me know how it works out for you.
el aguila- Let me know how it works out for you.
joejoe1055
New member
is the mandarin wild caught or one from ora?
Don't assume that. Do a search on the success with ORA mandarins.
Raceimage
Premium Member
My mandarin eats everything I put in the tank (frozen, pellets, live brine). Didn't have to do anything special to train it either. It just hangs out in areas of the tank near the base of the rocks when I'm feeding. The food kind of slows down there which permits the mandarin to figure out it is food and eat it while the fish are swimming in the high current areas eating.
