Scooter Blenny in a 7 gallon

My girlfriend just brought me home a scooter blenny because I told her how cute they were (not expecting her to buy me one)

We cannot return it because of the policy the store has so I am going to try it out and see how it goes.

I need some help with the care especially the feeding.

I have a ton of copapods but is there anything else I can feed him? I just need help with the general care of a scooter blenny in a nano reef.

Thanks

-Matt

the scooter should clean out your tank of pods in a few weeks so try suppliment him some live brine and see if he will eat frozen mysis if he will eat frozen foods you got off lucky try doing some searchs on they scooter and dragon nets since they have similar feeding requirments

wait he's gonna eat all the pods? every single one? I thought they don't eat them faster then they can breed.I have had the tank set up since january with no fish...isnt that enough time for the pods to build up a healthy colony?

isn't it bad if my tank doesnt have any copepods in it?

What type of pellets are being feed to the scotter in the feeding video?

what else besides mysis can I feed him?

what is a good other fish that wont be very competitive for food?

I was thinking a royal gramma(obviously not for a while so the blenny can be comfortable)

thanks

-Matt

yeah he'll eat all yuou pods not a problem if you don't have pods as he can't eat ALL of the. but he eat enough so that he'll eventually starve. so you'll havew to feed him. here's the trick. if you reall want another fish you have to get one that doesn't swim areound a bunch or is small, like som sort of watchman or neon goby. this way they won't eat all the frozen mysis before your blenny can. blennies are lazy bumbs and wont chase food very far. like maybe an inch or two at most. so the watchman gobys are a good match becuase they are not as likely to chase dsown tyhe food and eat all of it becuase they will just hang out infront of theiur hole and wait for it to float by. they neons are so small that they wont eat all of it before the blenny can. hth

I would have to agree with everyone.

All scooter blennies I have seen seem to eat all the live food first and then look around and wonder where they all went after. I haven't had much luck trying to feed thawed mysis shrimp (although if you could get them to eat it, that would be the best, nutrient wise) Another option, although a lesser choice is to feed them live brine shrimp (a good way to get any picky fish eating, but also a good way to give your fish parasites if you don't do a 5-10 minute freshwater dip on the brine shrimp before feeding)

I also agree with the bottom dweller companion. Any fish that is constantly swimming WILL get to the food first. (All carnivore fish will help eat your copopod/amphopod colony) If you can find one a Threadfin Goby (Stonogobiops nematodes) is a great, good personality, small, colorful fish that can be symbiotically paired with the small Candycane Pistol Shrimp (Alphaeid randalli)

When I got my scooter, he ate frozen brine, but I had to spot feed him directly. Took about a hour a day just to feed him at least ..(probably had to do this for a month or two)

After a week or two I gave him frozen bloodworms and he seemed to like those allot more than the frozen brine.

I later tried Mysis, but most of the mysis they sell are toooo big, so my scooter didnt really eat them, until I found some smaller sized mysis (p.e. mysis smallsize)

After a few months my scooter finally ate forumla1 pellets. The 1st month I seen him put a pellet in his mouth, but then he would spit them out...the 2nd month I seen him actually eat ONE pellet a few times. After 3-4 months he finally started eating them reguarlly....chomps on them like a crazy dog now.

I always soaked all my frozen foods in zoe and zoecon/selcon

I've fed my scooter at least 3 times a day, nearly every day since I got him....if I had no pods at all I would probably feed him 5+ times a day. (but I do have pods still)

I have no idea on the royal gramma fish...but one thing is that the gramma likes caves and rocks, and so does the scooter. Scooters go everywhere and are docile guys....I call them the chickens of the ocean.

Well, let me first qualify all of the statements below by saying I am quite a newbie to salt tanks, and do not keep a scooter blenny myself. My friend (who got me into reefkeeping) has a scooter in his 46gal bowfront. His blenny really likes algae. He'll eat a few bits of mysis, brine or bloodworms... but his main diet is the hair algae on the rocks, and some additional algae (purchased in sheets at lfs) clipped up near his favorite hiding spot.

He's definitely a lazy bum, but he's really fun to watch. He'll cruise around the tank, gumming the rocks and the glass. Hair algae was a problem in this tank before, and now the blenny has munched almost all of it off the rocks. My friend now has to rotate rock between tanks to give the hair algae a chance to grow back so that blennydude doesn't starve.

Just my $.02

-q

grammas are defensive, especially when it comes to their fave hiding spot, try a green banded goby or a neon goby.

I had very poor results (skinny Blenny) in my 7g. Once he moved to the 30, he ate all of the pods he could find, pretty much all of them. I make sure he gets some pods a couple times a week and I get live brine from time to time in order to make sure he gets enought to eat.

I feed the scooters this stuff called "Marine Cuisine for carnivore fish" by "san fransico bay brand". It's jam packed with any kind of oceanic meat that there is. It takes a while to get the scooters to realize that i'ts edible, but if a fish starves long enough it will eat what ever it can find.

some day, I too would like to get mine on pellet food.

I had a mandarin on Red Sea sweetwater zooplankton, but it's pretty difficult to get any dragonets to feed on anything but pods. Good luck with yours.

actually he died not more then a month after I got him

he ate up all the pods in my tank and wouldn't eat anything else one day I found him dead half eaten by my hermit crabs

I would not recommend them in a nano reef or really in any reef thats smaller then 100gallons unless of course you can supply copepods.

I now have a 6 line wrasse in my tank and I have since December

and he is an amazing fish very active healthy and seemingly happy(as far as I can tell for a fish)

he eats out of my hand and swims in and out of every crevice in my tank

I would recommend this fish for anyone with a nano

-Matt

Mysis is good, but keep in mind that most of the frozen mysiss you can get is Mysis relicta. This is a fersh water species. While being fairly nutritious protein wise, M. relicta lacks the needed omega 3 fatty acids such as DHA, EPA, and ARA (as do all fresh water and land dwelling critters) that are found in marine sources only. You may be able to solve this problem by soaking your frozen foods in selco, or one of the other HUFA enrichments. Frozen euphasids (also sold as marine plankton or as Euphasia pacifica) would be a nice addition to the diet if you can get your critters to eat them. unfotunatlely they are not too well suited to such a limited ecosystem as a nano.

EDIT: Doh never mind. I should learn to read the final addition to the post.