Mandarin dragonets
 

Hey everybody,

I just went to my LFS and saw a mandarin dragonet. I know that they are hard to keep and have specific food requirements, but do they only copepods? If they do, i don't think i would have a large enough setup to sustain it ( 50 gallon with 20 gallon sump). Anyone have any thought? Please make this constructive!

get the LFS to drop some food in the tank see if he goes for it.

You could learn it to eat frozen shrimps, but it is hard and once it learned still you should always turn off your powerheads and spot feed it because they are really slow.

"Samw" has one in his 40 gallon tank,it is doing great and he dont feed frozen food his tank! you could ask him.

I have bought a few of them that didnt eat prepared food and weaned them onto prep in QT, once thats done there the same as any other fish... If you do not attempt this and try to sustain them on pods they are far harder to maintain.

its one fish i always take a good look at how fat it is before i buy it, some look so thin i stay away, pick a fat one!

As far as frozen foods go, I have had the best luck using Hikari frozen mysis while working with mandarins. It is quite a bit smaller than PE mysis and more substantial than frozen pods/rotifers. It is getting harder and harder to find however. Might have to shop around for it.

Mine eat fish roe (caplan eggs Masago) the oranges eggs that we find on sushi. They also eat live white worms (which they go nuts for) and Hikari frozen bloodworms. With this diet and the pods, they are happy and fat.

If you can find a white worms culture locally, this is your best bet to keep a madarin alive and fat. Not the type of diet that you can feed the fish entirely on but they are very rich in protein and fat so they are a good add up to their diet.

My copperband also go nuts for them, as well as my anoying foxface.

Good idea, i will give that a try!

Thanks for the advice everyone! I will go and take a look at him tomorrow and try and find some of the food you have been talking about! Thanks!

I have two and do not train them. I have pods in the refugium. They are both fat and one of them goes nuts with NLS pellets!

I feed my tanks with mysis shrimps, flakes, roe, NLS pellets, and nori.