getting a mandarin to eat

[toytech]

Ive got mandarins onto frozen blood worms twice now , I had a 15 gal nano that was just for my mandarin and it had a lot of pods but I fed blood worms every second day from a pipet . Had them to the point where they would swim to the pipet and feed from it .

[asylumdown]

oooh, blood worms, that's a good thing to try. I just remembered that my overflows have been developing nice thick carpets of hair algae at the water's surface, so I pulled a chunk out. There's hundreds of pods, amphipods, and mysid shrimps crawling around in the mat so I put some in the QT tank. So far no reaction from the dragonette, so he's either not figured it out yet or he's not long for this world anyway.

[ScubaSteve]

I've used live white worms and blood worms. Mine seemed to go after the white worms with more gusto (if you can find them). Eventually start freezing them, then slowly start adding mysis. BOOM! Frozen trained mandarin.

[asylumdown]

Well this guy might not be 'my' mandarin. At lights out, there were literally two different kind of pods actually crawling right on him. No reaction. There's about 100 of the small kind within 2cm of his nose where he's sitting now and he doesn't even seem to see them. There's zero hunting behaviour at all, which as I understand is a bad sign. Hopefully he comes around tomorrow.

On the upside, giving him live food on a living algae substrate is going to have way less of an impact on the water quality in the transfer tanks.

[mrhasan]

I have heard that they like salmon eggs. Maybe give that a shot?

[ScubaSteve]

Originally Posted by mrhasan

I have heard that they like salmon eggs. Maybe give that a shot?

I could see them going after capalan roe but I think salmon eggs are much too large for them to swallow (unless it's a big mandarin).

[The Guy]

I was advised not to get one until your tank is minimum 1 year, so @ 6 months in I couldn't resist getting this beautiful psychedelic he seemed to be hunting and pecking all the time but lost him after about a month, should have taken the advise given by my long time reefer friend.
My tank is a 90g with about 80lbs of LR and it's at 14 months now so I am trying again.
I have lots of chaeto in my sump which is loaded with pods and it's supporting which seems to be supporting the food chain for both my new Pych and a red scooter blenny.
So far so good. fingers crossed!