I just bought a mandarin and was wondering what I can feed it if/when the copepods run low in my tank?

Do some reading. Here is some info to get you started.

http://www.nano-reef.com/search/q.php?cx=p...gonet&sa=Go

Most people aren't lucky enough to get them to eat anything besides pods. So it would be wise to make sure your tank can handle one just living off pods. Usually takes alot of patience to train them to eat mysis

training them is really hit or miss. I just got my mandarin to eat brine and bloodworms. thought i was gonna lose the little guy at one point but he's doing good now, putting the weight back on

good luck with it man.

rods food

happy reading

Yeah I do have a lot of copepods but the guy at the lfs said that my copepods WILL run out in about a month!
I dont think he is correct, but then again he could be more experienced than I am.



How exactly did you do that?

most likely what your lfs guy is saying is that you probably don't have the tank or the experience to keep it alive and it's going to starve in your tank. do a search, there are plenty of threads on this site about training them to take frozen. that being said it all depends on the individual fish and you about whether or not it works.

how old is your tank?

may not even last a month.

I put him in QT by himself (make sure you give him some hiding places but not too many that he wont find the food.). then I fed him live brine and slowly started adding in frozen brine. then you slowly lessen the amount of live brine and increase frozen till your feeding one and not the other. I did not start feeding less live brine until I saw him eat frozen.

I used garlic a bit but i just got lazy about it, and didn't see much benefit to it. Enriching with selcon or the like would be a good idea.

when you want to add something in to the diet its the same as when weaning to frozen.

I've also read that mandarins eat fish roe, but i have not tried it myself yet.

As I dont have a QT or much space at all do you think I should just try to feed manually?
and how would i go about storing live myosis?
Sorry for all of the dumb questions!

Read the Mandarin thread posted above.

+1

brine is easier to come by than mysis.

you could try a breeder net in the tank, but even a small QT would be much better. mine was 10g.

you may want to return the mandarin and do a lot of research before you decide to try one.

I researched for two years and until I found this article
I wasn't even planning one getting one.

go down to the feeding section.

1 YEAR

cool well atleast you have a stable mature tank. read up and good luck

Wow thnx everyone this is all great and helps a lot!
I have a 9 gal and with much patience i will be able to train this beautiful fish!
I will be trying the brine shrimp and frozen mysis for now, and will try to get a breeder net thingy to train it in!
OH where can i get the pipettes or those long plastic feeding tubes? LFS maybe?

he is

i use a turky bastor to feed my sun coral mysis. so maybe try that.?? there like $2 at walmart

Perfect!
Thnx again!

quite surprised no one has dogged him about keeping a mandarin in a 9g.

I was waiting for that!

Did you ask to see it eat at the fish store?
And is it still nice and full bodied, or is the stomach sunken in?

If the stomach is sunken (depressions on it's sides behind the fast moving fins), and you didn't see it eat at the store before purchase I would consider taking it back. In that small of a tank it'll probably wipe out the copepods before it starts to put on weight again, and the sunken stomach is usually a sign that it hasn't eaten well in a while and is loosing all it's energy reserves.

They should look very fleshed out/full bodied when they are in good shape (and can usually last long enough then to learn to eat frozen) think mini stuffed sausage.

To train--summed up, live food in a contained area (pipette, net breeder etc) once eating slowly mix in frozen of the same to all frozen and until it learns to come to the pipette or syringe and actually eat from it--had a spotted one I trained to eat from a small syringe--that way you are sure it's eating frequently (feed at least once a day, if not twice).

Do you add phyto to your tank?

I thought that was his QT tank.......

Very cool article. I'd like to do that someday.

If you'd mentioned your tank was 9g earlier I would have said you should probably return him earlier. 9 gallons is good for a temporary QT but it wont suffice for the messiness of feeding the mandarin for a prolonged period of time.

Hey swayd,

I've had the best success with getting mandarins on Selcon/garlic enriched bloodworms. For some reason bloodworms seem to trigger the best feeding response in my experience. I use Hikari bloodworms. I have had some luck with frozen brine shrimp but no luck with frozen mysis or pellets.

You should also pick up some Nutramar Ova. They are frozen prawn eggs and my mandarins really go after it. If you are in the San Francisco Bay Area, you can pick some up locally at Neptune Aquatics in Milpitas. I just found out this weekend that they started carrying it. I haven't found another local fish store that carries it and had to previously buy it online (expensive $25.00 shipping charge). Lastly, I feed bloodworms and nutramar ova twice a day.

I also have a refugium in my main tank to replenish the pods in the mandarin tank. Feeding frozen twice daily is messy, so I do weekly water changes. These fish are beautiful but they require extra effort to keep them fed. Good luck and let me know if you have any other questions.

SeaSkull


By the way here is a link to the nutramar ova website. It says that it is 31% minimum protein!

http://www.nutramar.com/ova.html

I <3 Neptune Aquatics.

Thank you all and I really need to check out neptunes aquatics ive heard so much about them!

I am so very lucky that my mandarin took to eating FREEZE DRIED BRINESHRIMP AND FROZEN MYSIS SHRIMP!!!!!!
I have just been turning off all of my filters and my powerhead and letting everything sink in the tank and he seems to be eating it little by little! last night he actually ate a lot and i was really surprised that he was eating freeze dried brine shrimp! He doesnt like the mysis very much but will eat some of it but since i ran out of it i have just been feeding him the brine shrimp and my corals seem to love it as well when i crush it up for them!
I know I am really lucky to have had this happen with out training the fish, and I am very happy!!!