Mandarin Goby

[SLPReefer]

Does anyone have any tips on getting Mandarins to eat frozen food and/or does anyone have any extra copepods for sale. I don't think I have enough to take out and culture.

[Alero]

Pretty much hit or miss on them eating frozen. Usually you don't want a mandarin in a fairly new tank (having a tank more than a year, better if longer). They will go through copes faster than you can put in. It is recommended to have lots of LR or Refug. to culture live food for them. I am sure people with more experience will chime in.

When was the tank set up and what size do you have?? Also, how long have you had him?

Originally Posted by SLPReefer

Does anyone have any tips on getting Mandarins to eat frozen food and/or does anyone have any extra copepods for sale. I don't think I have enough to take out and culture.

[Dwayne]

Pod piles are your friend.

[Beng]

This is how I got my green mandarin to eat frozen brine shrimp and cyclopeeze. I bought a medium size Lee's breeding container from Petsmart (about $5.00). I added a couple of small rocks and put mandarin in.

I then culture some live baby brine shrimp and feed to mandarin. I freeze the left overs. After about a week of feeding live baby brine shrimps, I start to feed my mandarin the left over dead frozen baby brine shrimps. By this time, my mandarin is use to eating brine shrimp and it's welling to eat the frozen ones. After it's eating frozen baby brine shrimp, I mix in some cyclopeeze. After a while, I will feed only cyclopeeze.

I think the most important thing in getting your mandarin to eat frozen food is
to put your mandarin in a confine space with low water flow where you can slowly introduce the food and let the mandarin pick and poke at it until it knows that it's food.

My Lee's breeding container with mandarin was in a 10 gallon with minimum water flow. This is so the baby brine shrimp doesn't get blown everywhere when introduce to the mandarin.

Beng

[Sea monkey]

even if you get them to eat prepared food they only eat what they come across , they don't sense feeding time and chase food down like other fish.

I would get a fuge of some sort and a a pile of rubble asap

[SLPReefer]

The mandarin was a present from my wife a couple days ago. I am doing my best to keep it healty and happy. That having been said, I have a 12 gallon aquapod that has been running for about 5 months. I have several pod pile type areas and a lot of macroalgae. I have gotten him to eat a brine shrimp, and he may have eaten a mysis shrimp yesterday. I was going to get cyclop-ees yesterday but the store was out.