trying something new to feed the mandarin

[jeremy K]

I know there have been lots of threads on mandarin feeding, but none of the info has been terribly helpful in my situation.

I hatched a bunch of live brine shrimp to feed my new mandarin fish who is in a bare tank right now (I want to teach him to eat prepared foods). I watched him for a while, but am not sure he ate any. He is always scanning the glass of the aquarium for things, and pecking at the glass which is mostly bare at this point.

This led me to an idea, and I wonder what people think of it. If I could somehow take a sheet of acrylic, apply some sort of adhesive to it and then dust on some cyclop-eeze (which, after all, is a form of pods), and then stand it up vertically in his tank, I wonder if he would be more interested in eating it. After all, he likes to roam up and down pecking at the glass walls, so why not make him a wall of food? My only question is what to use as adhesive to stick the cyclop-eeze to the acrylic. It would have to be something sticky enough to hold, but easy to remove and clean later. Any ideas? Has anyone tried this before?

 

[tcmfish]

Before you go through all that work, make sure he is not eating that brine? Does it look fatter?

 

[LobsterOfJustice]

http://www.melevsreef.com/mandarin_diner.html

 

[jeremy K]

Before you go through all that work, make sure he is not eating that brine? Does it look fatter?

Doesn't look at all fatter - the abdomen is still shrunken in. I have read Melev's article on the mandarin diner - but this would, logically, only work if the mandarin is already accepting foods. It is simply a way of preventing other fish in a large DT from getting the food before the mandarin does. My mandarin is now in a small, bare QT. The goal is to get him to easily eat prepared foods. I just hypothesize that he will accept them better off a vertical wall rather than off the floor, since he always searches the wall for food.

 

[tcmfish]

Is the water pretty full of live brine? and what kind of filter is on the tank?

 

[mdntrdr]

FWIW.........newly hatched brine shrimp have little nutritional value.

I like the wall idea, not sure how you could make it stick tho.

 

[killagoby]

Try this...

http://www.reefnutrition.com/tiggerpods.html

Ot this...

http://www.reefnutrition.com/arctipods.html

 

[jnc914]

Personally I don't QT mandarins, especially in a bare QT like the one mentioned above. Mandarins have a thick slime coat that is pretty resistant to ich and other parasites. Putting a mandarin in a bare QT setup is pretty much a death sentence. Mine is in a reef setup that is supplemented with Reef Nutrition Tigger Pods. It began eating immediately, not only the Tigger pods, but also brine, Arcti-pods, and small mysis.

 

[ShrimpChipGal]

How about just get something full of holes and spray it on with turkey baster?

 

[jeremy K]

How about just get something full of holes and spray it on with turkey baster?

Neat idea, but once I transfer the fish back to the DT the currents would blow the stuff away.

Tonight I will try the following - I'll take a sheet of cheap plexiglass, apply some thin glue to it and dust with cyclop-eeze. Then I will stand it vertically in the tank against the wall that the mandarin is always searching for food at. We'll see whether he recognizes this as food. I figure even with the glue, if he pecks at it he should be able to get most of it off. I'll let you all know how/if it works!

 

[mdntrdr]

What type of glue are you going to use?

 

[jeremy K]

What type of glue are you going to use?

Still thinking about it. Here's what I've considered so far:

1) Caramel. Ie. pure sugar that I melt in a frying pan until thin. Then I'd pour it over the plexiglass and sprinkle the cyclop-eeze over it. Advantages: Fairly reef safe (in fact, if any dissolves, you could call it sugar dosing!), edible, easy to remove.

2) Gorilla glue. Advantages: fairly inert, reportedly reef-safe. Disadvantages: Difficult to clean/remove, may trap the cyclop-eeze and make it tough for the mandarin to get at.

3) Heating the acrylic, then adding the cyclops while still soft.

Any thoughts/other suggestions?

 

[mdntrdr]

Sugar is intresting, but I would think it would dissolve pretty fast.

 

[snorvich]

In my opinion, what you are doing amounts to a death sentence. All those ideas are philosophically terrific, but the mandarin simply will not survive. Sorry.

 

[jeremy K]

In my opinion, what you are doing amounts to a death sentence. All those ideas are philosophically terrific, but the mandarin simply will not survive. Sorry.

I am not sure what you are basing your supposition on. Many aquarists have trained mandarins to eat prepared foods, and it seems the only way to do this is in a small bare tank. After all, if pods are present, they will eat these preferentially.

Of course, once the mandarin has been trained, it will be placed in my DT where there is lots of liverock and lots of pods. But this way, if the pod population declines, the mandarin will not necessarily starve to death, since it will be trained to accept other foods.

Too many of us have bought mandarins thinking we can sustain them on pods alone in a closed system. And too many of us have found out we were wrong. Others have tried numerous techniques to train mandarins, and I will let you know if mine works as well.

 

[tcmfish]

I've weaned mandarins to frozen using NHBS in a bare tank like what was mentioned above. I used a sponge filter so the brine shrimp would not get removed, and I packed the tank with NHBS. Then moved to frozen brine and then mysis. It worked fairly easily, just make sure you start with lots of NHBS because they will be in the water and the mandarin probably won't venture far off from a surface to get them.

 

[jeremy K]

I've weaned mandarins to frozen using NHBS in a bare tank like what was mentioned above. I used a sponge filter so the brine shrimp would not get removed, and I packed the tank with NHBS. Then moved to frozen brine and then mysis. It worked fairly easily, just make sure you start with lots of NHBS because they will be in the water and the mandarin probably won't venture far off from a surface to get them.

Thanks for that. If my "food wall" idea doesn't work, I'll probably go that route.

 

[ShrimpChipGal]

IAfter all, if pods are present, they will eat these preferentially.

Well that's kind of true and false at the same time in my case. I have a system with a fuge that has lots of pods to sustain them (pair) and other pod eaters, but they still learned to eat frozen foods. I didn't spend any time training them to eat frozen. Perhaps limiting food source isn't the only way to help them recognize that there are other food sources.

 

[killagoby]

Neat idea, but once I transfer the fish back to the DT the currents would blow the stuff away.

Tonight I will try the following - I'll take a sheet of cheap plexiglass, apply some thin glue to it and dust with cyclop-eeze. Then I will stand it vertically in the tank against the wall that the mandarin is always searching for food at. We'll see whether he recognizes this as food. I figure even with the glue, if he pecks at it he should be able to get most of it off. I'll let you all know how/if it works!

That whole fish eating off of glue thing worries me.

 

[tcmfish]

that whole fish eating off of glue thing worries me.

+1