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Score! Ruby Red Dragonet for $10 - What do you feed yours?


musicsmaker

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I didn't see a price sticker for the ruby red, so I asked the guy at Petco how much it was. He said that he had to sell it at the price of a normal scooter blenny because the supplier sent the wrong item. I couldn't pass it up.

I know that they eat pods in the tank, but I was wondering if any of you have had any luck with frozen foods. Any experiences you would like to share would be greatly appreciated.

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I didn't see a price sticker for the ruby red, so I asked the guy at Petco how much it was. He said that he had to sell it at the price of a normal scooter blenny because the supplier sent the wrong item. I couldn't pass it up.

I know that they eat pods in the tank, but I was wondering if any of you have had any luck with frozen foods. Any experiences you would like to share would be greatly appreciated.

I got mine the exact same way... but I also had a 5 off coupon ;)

Mine readily accepted prime reef flake and worked onto formula 1 pellets,now after over a year it will accept anything. Make sure to feed it daily. Very vigorous little buggers

They got a soft spot for me cause they look Ike the maryland flag.

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Polarcollision

I feed my mandarin fresh hatched brine shrimp and she's a fat little piggy. She'll have nothing to do with pellets or frozen unforunately

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I found the trick to getting my ruby to accept and the red dragonet I had was to make sure pumps are off and that the food is near the dragonet. If other fish are present that helps too so it can see oh hey the other guys are eating that stuff

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I had luck feeding frozen lobster eggs, using a pipette to get them to the bottom to near where he was. Only took a couple of days before he associated the pipette with food and would wait by it's tip for the food. I would feed every day, mine was always on the hunt, like a mandarin.

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Every couple months I throw pods in for my pair. I feed lrs with pumps off and they have recently started swinging towards the top of my artwork to eat.

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Well, that didn't last! When I was acclimating him, I noticed that his stomach was sunken in like he had been starving for a while. I hoped he would recover, but this morning the hermits were picking the last bits of flesh from his cartilage skeleton. Turns out I bought some gourmet hermit crab food. Hope they liked it.

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Well, that didn't last! When I was acclimating him, I noticed that his stomach was sunken in like he had been starving for a while. I hoped he would recover, but this morning the hermits were picking the last bits of flesh from his cartilage skeleton. Turns out I bought some gourmet hermit crab food. Hope they liked it.

 

that sucks, scooters have a rather high mortality rate in captivity sadly

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I had luck feeding frozen lobster eggs, using a pipette to get them to the bottom to near where he was. Only took a couple of days before he associated the pipette with food and would wait by it's tip for the food. I would feed every day, mine was always on the hunt, like a mandarin.

I started mine on mysis this way, now he sees me coming to the tank and goes to the spot where I always feed him.

 

To the OP, this is the biggest problem with fish from a store like Petco. Those guys come in and sit in a wholesalers tank for weeks at a time and starve. If you can get one that's freshly imported they fare MUCH better. I transshipped mine in and he and his mate were eating the next day and gained weight quickly.

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To the OP, this is the biggest problem with fish from a store like Petco. Those guys come in and sit in a wholesalers tank for weeks at a time and starve. If you can get one that's freshly imported they fare MUCH better. I transshipped mine in and he and his mate were eating the next day and gained weight quickly.

Unfortunately it's not strictly a big box store issue. I rarely see dragonetts that look healthy unless they are in the store's display tank. Dozens of stores up and down the East coast and they almost always have sunken in bellies. It's a sad fact that they don't tend to get proper care in the distribution network (most fish don't). They have a high metabolism and hunt all day, without a regular food supply available and shippers/transporters/wholesalers willing to supply them with pods or willing to train them onto live food, they arrive at the stores well on their way to being starved to death. It would be awesome if the stores took the time to fatten them up and start working them off of live food, but that would require a lot of time and space, which would drive the cost of the fish up quite a bit.

 

Is what we need is a push to breed them in captivity like what is done with clowns. We need that for most species really. (Other than lion fish which need to be captured localy in the gulf and around Hawaii to help eradicate them). If raised from fry, they are much easier to train to flakes and frozen food. I'm hoping to give this a try once I finish school and get settled somewhere.

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That was tried, and apparently failed because while everyone SAYS they'd prefer a $40-50 mandarin/scooter captive bred that accepts a few reletively common frozen foods, in reality all to many would turn around & BUY the 20-buck wild caught one.

 

Then those companies breeding them found it was really really hard to do in commercially viable quantities.

 

Then there's those that waited for the captive bred to be ordered, paid the premium and had them still waste away due to the fish falling back on pods instead of prepared foods once in store holding tanks or getting put off eating entirely from shipping/rehoming stress.

 

I just started over with a ruby the other week. My previous mandarin stopped eating after a year and a half... it was heartbreaking to watch it happen and I'm sure I spent over a hundred on different foods to try to find anything that it would accept. Both wild but happily would pay a certainty tax.

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Therein lies the problem, the end cost. I'd take captive bred over wild caught, but the price is going to have to drop dramatically for that to happen on a wide scale basis. I transship them in and they don't leave here until they are eating well. I have a red scooter that kind of "teaches" the new arrivals to eat mysis, and he's pretty damn good at it.

 

Beer, they're one of those high profit fish, they're dirt cheap, easy to collect and the mark up is quite a bit. Which means they're "expendable" to most wholesalers. They're not going to invest the time to get them going, it's get them in and get them out ASAP and pocket the money.

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Yeah, most people have a hard time justifying the cost difference.

 

I mostly want to do it just to give it a shot and see if I can.

 

I know it's a business and people need to make a living, I hate seeing animals treated as a commodity with no regard for their quality of life, or with no regard for their life in general.

 

StinkyBunny, are you a wholesaler or a transshipper? I'd love to get my hands on some dragonetts through someone that truly cares for them and deals directly with the collectors if I couldn't find anything locally bred (doubtful).

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