Training & Feeding a Mandarin

[Greenstar]

he'll get his, everyone who gives bad advice is subject to public ridicule.

[Kozo]

Well Khayman thanks for letting me know a bit more about yourself and that you have done a lot of research on the mandarins and I hope that you notice that I never mention that you didn't do your homework for this fish. However you are still far too early to post your training methods (not talking about pod population since I never talk about that in my previews post) since you do not have the hands on experience with this methods.

 

Now you say it your self your mandarin was already eating the frozen foods, and that was one of my points. If you read my post again you will see that I mainly talk about your method for weaning the mandarin to eat prepare foods wish I considered to be not appropriate. And now you let us know that you did not train the fish, and that he was trained by the breeders themselves and later on at your LFS. And thats why I'm telling you that the main issue with your initial post is that your training methods a far too vague and really irresponsible but it is just my opinion.

 

Now I will talk a bit about aka_BigRed method for pods population, he is using this method to keep a mandarin in a 75g tank, which is different from what you are trying to do, and not only that, in his post, he only posted the method for this pods condos however there is no other info on how successful he was later on the process, I did send him a PM but not answer yet, I'm also interested to see how did it go.

 

Now when you answer my post, you did not talk about my main concerns with your initial post of the topic, and you mainly focus on a different subject. I hope you will be able to help us more with some more info that you will gather in your near future. And that you are able to recognize what you may have done wrong with this post and perhaps not to deviate your thread into a battle of who is educated and who is not (thats not reefing, thats political correctness), and I'm sorry but it seems you have done that already. Now my advise is to not get so agitated about the replies you get from some reefers (even the rude replies), and try to keep the topics within its margins, and again understand that you did gave some miss-leading information since you did not wean the fish yourself. Thanks and please don't feel offended by my posts since that is not the intention at all.

 

Edit: HAHA after reading this post, I notice that maybe I have join the battle too Now back to reefing, please people lets hear some more info on how to train a mandarin or a sea-horse to eat frozen foods

[jonrx]

I fast tracked all this by buying a mandarin that eats flakes and frozen already. ^_^

[Kozo]

I was looking for one that was trained but no luck, so I'm training it myself and so far so good with the method that I'm trying. Now jonrx the problem with mandarin is not only about what they eat, but what animals they are house with, since faster fish will take their food even if the mandarins are willing to take it, so pay attention to that.

[DrCooper]

I am in the process of training my guy! We see how it goes

[Khayman]

Kozo

 

Thank you again for your reply. Your criticism is noted. I am culturing Copods, arthropods, and also Brine Shrimp. The brines took less than 2 days to hatch and the Mandarine loves them. I put them in the tank when they are very small and she nabs them in fast. The pods are in a 5G tank divided in the middle so they do not get mixed together (though I am unsure if that really matters). The Mandarine is still readily excepting frozen as well as the live foods. She does have a favorite grazing area in the tank beside my yellow Sun Coral.

 

The "Pod Condo" has been used twice now and she does go right to the area I place it in the tank after it is seeded. I am sure she and other things eat the pods quickly. However that is the point of the Condo. It stays in for a day or two. Then I remove it and place it back in the pods tank. Pods as I am sure you all know are very hard to see. After closer examination with a magnifier you can see them. I leave the Condo’s in the pod tanks for a day or so them move one back over.

 

The brine hatchery is a much easier thing to accomplish. I am using 500ml Glass Laboratory Bottle. The brine are hatched in Phytoplankton left to grow for about 2 days after hatching, so they are still very small. I then introduce them to the tank. The seem to last about 1-2 days before they are all gone. Everything in the tank eats them including the Mandarine. Once I have pictures of the cultures I will post them.

 

I will do my best to keep this as up to date as possible for all of you who are following along. After about a month or two I should have a more accurate prognosis on if this method is or can be successful. Though I will only be satisfied on a real success if it works for more than 6 months. If this Mandarine does die I will let you all know and perhaps revamp the process. My early thoughts are that the Brine hatchery is a more favorable method fir this Mandarine.

[Khayman]

he'll get his, everyone who gives bad advice is subject to public ridicule.

 

As for the bad advice opinion you have.

 

I do not agree with this. As I have sadi several times I am feed ing live pods and brine to the Mandarine. And also the "Condos" must be seeded with live pods.

 

As for the "Public ridicule"

 

I have received several very positive messages about this little experiment I have going. Many more possitive than negative.

 

I have had a few ask me for advice to which i have stated that until this experiment is over I am not qualified to answer their questions. I do however state that the pods I purchased and I am culturing are "Zoo2" and cost about $25.00 per jar and last about 1-2 weeks. I do feel the Brine shrimp culture will be the best souce for feeding thses fish.

[Greenstar]

Why don't you answer my question. How can you maintain a stable population of pods in your little basket contraption? How are the pods being fed? How are you able to monitor the population and assure the correct density of living pods for the mandarin to graze correctly?

 

Also that pod species, is temperate and does best in a cool environment. They can survive in warmer water but reproduce poorly do to heat shock and severely increased metabolism

[Khayman]

Why don't you answer my question. How can you maintain a stable population of pods in your little basket contraption? How are the pods being fed? How are you able to monitor the population and assure the correct density of living pods for the mandarin to graze correctly?

 

Also that pod species, is temperate and does best in a cool environment. They can survive in warmer water but reproduce poorly do to heat shock and severely increased metabolism

 

Greenstar

 

I have answered your question a couple times.

Q - "How can you maintain a stable population of pods in your little basket contraption?"

A - The basket contraption as I have stated many times must be seeded, or filled. I do this with Zoo2 and the culture I have started using Zoo2.

 

Q - "How are the pods being fed?"

A - They seem to be doing great. I add Photoplancton every day. I also culture this. If the Pod culture dies I still have the Zoo2 to fall back on.

 

Q - "How are you able to monitor the population and assure the correct density of living pods for the mandarin to graze correctly?"

A - I will have to observe the Mandarine for this. The tank is also seeded daily.

 

I hope this answers your questions. Also as stated this is a working experiment. I also add live brine shrimp

[Greenstar]

So really your little basket thing does nothing as your adding a species of pods that are not really suitable for a reef environment. And your basic premise has little to do with culturing pods in situ but instead continually dosing more to keep the population up. This method has nothing to do with training or feeding a mandarin in a nano as there you have provided no proof of success. You came up with a hypothesis, stated it as a fact and are advising people to do the same. You fail at this hobby, please refrain from pretending to have any knowledge on the subject or to give others advice on how to keep mandarins. I dare say you are doomed to fail and will ultimately kill this fish, just like you killed the dragonette before it.

[Kozo]

Hi Khayman, thanks for the extra info, however you have yet respond to my concerns, but I hope you did get them, and I see that you are telling others that you are not sure yet about your methods, now I do think you should edit some of your initial post about training, just as Greenstar posted "the topic of this thread is not the correct one", since you are not training the mandarin, you are actually feeding him pods all the time at a high cost money wise, since you have fail to reproduce the pods outside your tank (it seems that way from what you said). Now I'm not familiar on how to raise pods outside an establish aquarium, but here is again the link to MOFIB where you will find great info on how to raise the Zooplankton needed:

 

http://www.marinebreeder.org/phpbb/viewfor...06eb934118acacd

 

That link is for the forum on how to breed the Zooplankton which is what the pods actually eat. And on that web page there is more info on how to raise the pods too.

 

Now about the Live Brine Shrimp (LBS), which wont sustain a mandarin since it does not have enough nutrients most reefers say that is like feeding candy to your fish, and even worst for a Mandarin which needs a very reach diet, you can enrich the LBS which I do for my training but again is not even close to what the mandarin needs, your ultimate goal should be to train it to eat PE mysis and other high nutrients foods.

 

Now if you would like to enrich you LBS, you could use live phyto, Super Selco, and Spirulina.

 

Here is a link to get some of those products:

 

http://www.brineshrimpdirect.com/c1/Enrichments-c8.html

 

Well hope that helps, and remember that maybe you should do something about your initial post or topic, which is what motivate some members to give you a hard time.

[jenisiz]

What's the point of having a madarin if it just sits around and waits to be fed all day? The beauty of a madarin is getting to watch it hunt...endlessly...

[Kozo]

Well thats true, and the mandarin will continue to do that in your tank, just because he knows you will feed him, doesn't mean that he wont hunt around, they still do.

[revaltion131]

Just like any other fish that eats prepared foods and "grazes". My wrasse and butterfly in my 65 spend the whole day searching for food while the angel and blenny in my 34 do the same. When I put food in the tank, the come and get it (usually come up to the front of the tank when I'm near it) and then go back to "doing their thang" after the food's gone.

[jenisiz]

lol....just kinda being a smarta** haha...

[Khayman]

Kozo

 

I would be happy to rename the thread if it bothers you that much. Unfortunately I do not know how to do this. If I could I would add (Working Experiment) to the title. I decided to make this thread because of the interest in these animals. There is a wealth of information out there in all the forums, books and articles. The idea behind this thread was to try and get as much of that information in one spot as possible. Of course I posted what I was trying first. If anyone would like to add what he or she have tried whether it worked or failed it would be welcome here.

 

Greenstar

 

As I have stated many, many, many times to you. Please read the first of the thread it states right from the beginning that you had to have pods to add to the condos. I already know that a Nano system unless it had a very healthy Refugium could never maintain the required pod population. So please everyone read the beginning of this thread. Also Greenstar I feel a great deal of hostility from you toward this thread. Have you ever owned a Mandarine? What size tank do you have? Do you have a link to your tanks thread? If you have owned a Mandarine and it has died on you I am sorry. Perhaps you could tell us all what you did so that we can all learn from your experience.

[ronreef]

The best I can tell from your tank thread is that you have owned a mandarin for no more than 3 weeks, and potentially even less. You really shouldn't be making a thread talking about mandarin care given your history...

 

You used to own a scooter blenny just a few weeks ago that has since died because it "got stuck between the tank and some rock".

 

Let me just be frank... no. Fish do not "get stuck". It died because it didn't have enough food and starved to death. Then its body, as it was floating around dying, got stuck. And since the fish was dying it didn't have the strength to swim any more, and it got stuck where the current took it.

 

Your mandarin is likely to face the same exact fate if your only answer is some BS 3x3" sack of rock.

 

How many hundreds... even tens of pods do you really expect to "breed" every day using a little sack of rock?

 

Yeah, you do come off as rude. Maybe you weren't trying to be, but you did Man... some people! Don't kill the man's enthusiasm. Encourage it! Sheesh... another one of those pseudo-reef gods.

[Greenstar]

Yeah, you do come off as rude. Maybe you weren't trying to be, but you did Man... some people! Don't kill the man's enthusiasm. Encourage it! Sheesh... another one of those pseudo-reef gods.

 

 

Kill yourself

[reefman225gal]

Kill yourself

You answered this post, but this is the one i think you should of replied to.

 

 

Greenstar

 

As I have stated many, many, many times to you. Please read the first of the thread it states right from the beginning that you had to have pods to add to the condos. I already know that a Nano system unless it had a very healthy Refugium could never maintain the required pod population. So please everyone read the beginning of this thread. Also Greenstar I feel a great deal of hostility from you toward this thread. Have you ever owned a Mandarine? What size tank do you have? Do you have a link to your tanks thread? If you have owned a Mandarine and it has died on you I am sorry. Perhaps you could tell us all what you did so that we can all learn from your experience.

[Greenstar]

Greenstar

 

As I have stated many, many, many times to you. Please read the first of the thread it states right from the beginning that you had to have pods to add to the condos. I already know that a Nano system unless it had a very healthy Refugium could never maintain the required pod population. So please everyone read the beginning of this thread. Also Greenstar I feel a great deal of hostility from you toward this thread. Have you ever owned a Mandarine? What size tank do you have? Do you have a link to your tanks thread? If you have owned a Mandarine and it has died on you I am sorry. Perhaps you could tell us all what you did so that we can all learn from your experience.

 

 

I have kept several tanks over the last 9 years, I have worked at a couple fish stores and have dealt with many many many mandarins. I have trained a number mandarins to eat frozen food with a relatively high success rate by placing them in small space and putting in exaggerated amounts of frozen food (mysis, brine, cyclops) 2x daily and siphoning the excess food out daily. They learn what the food looks like from picking at it and in a week or two most will readily feed out of the water column. I have preformed this method on ~50 mandarins over the last year. That is proof.

 

I am hostile towards you because you are an idiot, and stupid people usually have hard time understanding things unless they are forced down their throats. You are failing to relize the natural history of those pods. They aren't going to reproduce well in a reef tank environment. There isn't enough surface area and food for one of the crappy "condos" you make to provide for a large enough population. You have no proof of anything just misguided ideas. You need to not give advice till you understand what you are talking about.

 

 

 

Let me make this simple:

 

You have no experience

You have no proof

You don't understand the biology of those ZOO2 californicus copepod

There is not enough room in one of the condos to harbor a large enough population to feed the mandarin

There is not enough food for the pods

its a waste of money to feed the pods and constantly introduce more

pods don't grow on LR

[Kozo]

Thanks for the reply Khayman, and the title does not bother me, what bothers me is just how the thread was started, because when you start reading your initial posts it gives you the impression that you have proved that this methods work, that you have all the experience needed to help others, and thats not the case. Now the main problem is not you or the thread, the problem is the beginners that will read just the initial methods and think that those methods were proven and thats all they need to keep the mandarin, and again is not your fault is their because they may not read the whole thread, where you have explain many things and that the method is experimental, as well as all the other info that other members gave in this topic.

 

Now like I said before I thank you for opening the topic because it will bring some experience reefers, but you have to agree that the first 4 or 5 post that you made gave the impression that all this was proven and can mislead many beginners. If you edit some of that and add some more info, you could have a great thread, and many others will be glad to help you.

 

The last thing I have to say, is that you talk about getting info from others reefers. And some of us have give you some info, however you never showed interest on the info given, neither gave a feedback about it. It seems that you are struggling to keep a healthy pod culture and I did direct you to some good info in MOFIB which I hope you have looked at. Check those forums and you will get all the info that you need to raise the pods.

 

Now Greenstar you are here definitely to insult everyone and nothing else, since I register to NR I have come across to some of your comments on many threads and they all have been the same as the one given in this one, completely destructive and insulting. You said that you know what you need to do in order to get you message heard, but it seems to me that you are just insulting and no message at all. The only thing you have done so far is insult and not advise, you did talk about what experience you had in this hobby but you have yet gave some info on what could be done. Your last post had some info but really it was insulting more than anything.

 

Thanks to you all, and Khayman if you need help on how to edit your thread, you should read the FAQ or ask any other reefer. I could help if you really do not know.

[HecticDialectics]

Yeah, you do come off as rude. Maybe you weren't trying to be, but you did Man... some people! Don't kill the man's enthusiasm. Encourage it! Sheesh... another one of those pseudo-reef gods.

 

lmao

[Khayman]

Greenstar

 

This is for everyone that has read this far into the thread. I spent a great deal of time today reading every post Greenstar has ever posted in NR. I can quite confidently say until proof is given other wise that he/she is just a hate monger. Greenstar has never posted any positive info or even showed a tank. There were to separate comments on two separate threads that Greenstar said first they had a 6G and then said they had 9G.

In the past people have asked you Greenstar for some proof of you "extensive experience" in reefing. So far you have never given any. You say you have worked in aquarium stores and you have had many tanks. Why not start a thread on one or hmm maybe many.

 

Also as for your idea on how you taught Mandarines to eat frozen. I am very happy to say you are very wrong. I had the LFS where I bought my Mandarin ask the breeder that sells Mandarines that eat frozen. By the way as I have stated before they allowed me to help and teach mine once I chose the one I wanted. I will ask the LFS to ask breeder if I can share that information with NR. I will not just post it because they make money selling the frozen eating Mandarines.

 

Your idea of training would only succeed in starving many Mandarines to death. Though a couple may have survived it.

"I have trained a number mandarins to eat frozen food with a relatively high success rate by placing them in small space and putting in exaggerated amounts of frozen food (mysis, brine, cyclops) 2x daily and siphoning the excess food out daily. They learn what the food looks like from picking at it and in a week or two most will readily feed out of the water column. I have preformed this method on ~50 mandarins over the last year. That is proof."

 

If this sounds confrontational all I can say is Greenstar should be happy to show us their experience.

[Kraylen]

lmfao what a dumb method + waste of time for a common 17 dollar fish everyone and their mother has.

 

Untrained Dragonette - 17 dollars

Prepared Food Eating Dragonette - 17 dollars.

Stupid "Pod breeding" tactics and set ups because people dont want to listen and establish a tank - Lots of money.

Therapy from being destroyed on NR - Lots of money.

Khaymens lack of spellcheck use - priceless.

 

</end thread>

[revaltion131]

We need a yawning smiley. This is the best I've got.

 

The pod condos...lol...no. I'm not buying it and the science behind it doesn't work. It's just an extra 3" column of LR you could have somewhere else in your tank not looking terrible. There will always be room in the rocks where fish can't get to because of size restraints that pods can safely "breed" in, probably the same as these little "condos" if not more space. I agree you can't move them and reseed them, but if you train the mandarin (and other pod-dependent fish) on frozen foods, it's not an issue anyway.

 

Khayman, your ideas are interesting, but from what options I have seen, there are better and proven ones. Just putting frozen in the fish's "hunting grounds" is going to pollute the tank if the fish isn't interested. If it's grazing and there is live food available, it'll go for the live before the frozen because it recognizes it as a food source. Also, what's to stop your clean-up crew from eating that food before the fish gets to it? I don't know about you, but my "crew" zeros in on any food I put in the tank and the second anything drops out of the water column and onto the rocks or somewhere in their range, even the nass snails hit the food as soon as they can. Other fish are the same. The only fish I have that wouldn't do it is my clown, he'd ignore the stuff on the rocks.

 

This idea of training could result in the same thing that you're saying Greenstar's would: "only succeed in strving many Mandaines to death. though a couple may have survivrd it." Granted it may not happen as quickly, but if it's in a tank that's too small and the proper time isn't taken to truly train them onto frozen food, they will starve as well. The difference between yours and Greenstar's is that he is putting it in a very controlled situation in which he probably has easy access to the fish and it may have little to no competition (can't speak for sure since I obviously don't have access to the set-up he uses), he has used it before and not just seen it from others, and he cleans up what isn't eaten so it doesn't sit there and pollute the tank.

 

Not everybody has a tank thread, it's not a requirement to be on this forum. If you did read all of Greenstar's other posts, if you know your stuff like you seem to think you do, you'd realize that he does as well. Also, if you actually searched through and read every last one of his posts, you have more issues than this guy on this website. People can have multiple tanks. I'm sure if you searched mine I'd say I have a 34 in some threads, 65 in others, and 3 in yet another.