feeding a green mandarin

[psuedo74]

I have had a green mandarin for about two months now and I have not physically seen him feed yet. Is there something I can add to its diet specifically?

I feed the rest of my inhabitants in my 120/150lbslr a combo of prime reef flake for dry and Mysis and or formula 1 or 2 for frozen food.

Many thanks

 

[Entacmaea]

As you probably know, mandarins are infamously finicky eaters. Many only eat live foods (mostly pods from your tank). You can train them on live brine shrimp- start with the smallest brine shrimp you can find, or even baby brine just hatched. They have a very small mouth, so eat small prey. I also had to use a long piece of rigid air line to place the live brine right in front of the mandarin- it is not a chaser, and won't enter the water column at the beginning to chase things. Once it is eating live brine, you can switch over slowly to frozen brine or zooplankton. It may never eat flake or dried foods. Also, since adult brine are not nutritionally robust, put a few drops of Selcon in with them for an hour or so, or better yet, get some algae paste and enrich them that way.

How much live rock do you have, and how large is you tank?

 

[Anonymous]

I have had both my mandarins eventually accept frozen brine by placing copious amounts of it on the sand where they are hunting. My very large "plain" mandarin eventually would take mysis, but my green one never has, only frozen brine. Niether one of them would eat for me until I had them for several seeks, maybe months, and it took alot of times placing brine in front of them before they tried it.

And I understand that frozen brine is not terribly nutritious. I think the enriched live brine is a good suggestion too, if you can pipette them down to him.

Because they are so hard to feed, plenty of live rock, and a good population of live rock critters are a must for these guys to stay plump.

 

[danmhippo]

It's the primary reason we advice against purchasing mandarin. 99% end up dying in captivity.

Unless you have a mature tank with lots of pods, otherwise mandarin do not stand the chance. Of all these years, I've only heard 3 cases of mandarin trained to take frozen food, and have only seen one personally. Most had them for a year plus before training them successfully.

Even with brine shrimps, they do not draw much nutrient from adult brine shrimps. Unless you can gut load the brine shrimp, and a few actually made into his mouth before other fish finish them off, otherwise, I would suggest you bring the mandarin back to the store, just tell the store that they did not warn you about the feeding requirement of this fish. OR, ask them to feed him right in front of you.

 

[psuedo74]

As you probably know, mandarins are infamously finicky eaters. Many only eat live foods (mostly pods from your tank). You can train them on live brine shrimp- start with the smallest brine shrimp you can find, or even baby brine just hatched. They have a very small mouth, so eat small prey. I also had to use a long piece of rigid air line to place the live brine right in front of the mandarin- it is not a chaser, and won't enter the water column at the beginning to chase things. Once it is eating live brine, you can switch over slowly to frozen brine or zooplankton. It may never eat flake or dried foods. Also, since adult brine are not nutritionally robust, put a few drops of Selcon in with them for an hour or so, or better yet, get some algae paste and enrich them that way.

How much live rock do you have, and how large is you tank?

5 have a 120 with over 150 lbs of LR

he seems plump as can be so...maybe he will live

thanks

 

[Entacmaea]

If it is a well-established tank, you might do just fine with that much live rock. Just keep on eye on him and make sure he does slowly starve.

 

[Anonymous]

It's the primary reason we advice against purchasing mandarin. 99% end up dying in captivity.

Unless you have a mature tank with lots of pods, otherwise mandarin do not stand the chance. Of all these years, I've only heard 3 cases of mandarin trained to take frozen food, and have only seen one personally. Most had them for a year plus before training them successfully.

Even with brine shrimps, they do not draw much nutrient from adult brine shrimps. Unless you can gut load the brine shrimp, and a few actually made into his mouth before other fish finish them off, otherwise, I would suggest you bring the mandarin back to the store, just tell the store that they did not warn you about the feeding requirement of this fish. OR, ask them to feed him right in front of you.

That's cruel. Taking him back to the store is a death sentence, since the odds are strongly against that fish going to another home in a 120+ gallon tank with live rock. He will languish in a small fish store glass box with NO food for a few days, bringing him closer to starvation, and then he will go to some kid with a 40 gallon fish only tank, where he will die within a month.

Keep the fish, forget feeding him (waste of time and effort), and just hope your tank is healthy enough to sustain a large enough pod population to feed him and that he doesn't start driving pod species to extinction.

IMO, if you really want him to survive, I would make a refugium. But for now, I would make a "pod pile" in a back corner of the tank. Just pile up some crushed coral and shove small piece of dead shrimp and some algea (like nori) deep into it once a week. It will up the nutrient load in the tank, so watch that, but it will provide a source of food for the pods that cannot be tapped by larger animals.

 

[psuedo74]

I couldnt agree with you more about returning him, I think the odds are in his favor in my humble tank. So, if I follow you correctly, serving up Nori would help increase the pod population? Because I feed it often to my Naso and Hippo...They only tear and consume a fifth of the 2x3 inch slice I clip for them the rest gets dispersed into the tank.

Thanks

Oh yeah I hate Miami too, I almost lost my soul in South Beach. 8O

 

[Anonymous]

I couldnt agree with you more about returning him, I think the odds are in his favor in my humble tank. So, if I follow you correctly, serving up Nori would help increase the pod population? Because I feed it often to my Naso and Hippo...They only tear and consume a fifth of the 2x3 inch slice I clip for them the rest gets dispersed into the tank.

Thanks

Oh yeah I hate Miami too, I almost lost my soul in South Beach. 8O

:lol: Yeah it sucks here. being born here, I was born without a soul. :twisted:


The nori isn't necessary, but I have observed pods munching algae in my tank. The plastic clip I feed my tang off of gets a small colony inside the clip where the tang can't get to the algea if I leave the clip in for a few days.

The point really is to put food in a place that no fish or other animals can get to and to provide a place for pods to breed and exist away from the reach of the mandarin and other predators.

 

[psuedo74]

that makes sense, so if I just put a few small pieces of Nori under some of the substrate etc in a corner then that would suffice?

hey, look at it this way you could move to Vermont and have a great robust ol soul but then you wouldnt have all those plastic breasts surrounding you...

hmmmm....

 

[Anonymous]

My suggestion is to get a pod penthouse. It's a medium sized peice of super-porus lava that I can't remember the trade name of right now. You have to be somewhat careful since some of these can leach iron into the water, but if you can find one that has been in a FW tank for a few years, like I did... Man they LOVE that thing. There are tens of thousands of them in there (ok, I am exaggerating a bit here) The holes are too small for anything to get into but pods. Mine is getting clogged up with coraline now, but dang, it rocked while it was fully open. It was actually kinda scary at night time cause it would be crawling with them. :twisted:

Just my 2 cp worth.

 

[Mihai]

Man, read the advice carefully - Manny said to make a pod pile, i.e., a pile of LR rubble to protect the pods. The nori thing is optional - it may help it, but the pile is the essential thing, don't overlook these "details".

M.

 

[danmhippo]

My suggestion is to get a pod penthouse. It's a medium sized peice of super-porus lava that I can't remember the trade name of right now. You have to be somewhat careful since some of these can leach iron into the water, but if you can find one that has been in a FW tank for a few years, like I did... Man they LOVE that thing. There are tens of thousands of them in there (ok, I am exaggerating a bit here) The holes are too small for anything to get into but pods. Mine is getting clogged up with coraline now, but dang, it rocked while it was fully open. It was actually kinda scary at night time cause it would be crawling with them. :twisted:

Just my 2 cp worth.

I think you meant lava rock?

I used to build a few using powerhead filter attachments filled with pebbles or ceramid biological beads. Bioballs works too. I had a friend use those FW tanks clear corner filters.

 

[Anonymous]

My 3 year old mManderin loves frozen formula one. I only feed that to the tank once or twice a week, but he always perks up if he happens by a piece of it when he swims by.

I have also seen him eat spiriluna pellets.

He mostly just pics at the rocks for his main food.

A healthy refugium is the key I believe.

Louey

 

[Anonymous]

that makes sense, so if I just put a few small pieces of Nori under some of the substrate etc in a corner then that would suffice?

hey, look at it this way you could move to Vermont and have a great robust ol soul but then you wouldnt have all those plastic breasts surrounding you...

hmmmm....

At least I'd be safe in Vermont....only state out of 50 where concealed carry is the right of every citizen without filing for a licence or anything. :wink: Also has the lowest gun crime rate in the country. :lol:

 

[Anonymous]

It's the primary reason we advice against purchasing mandarin. 99% end up dying in captivity.

100% actually, unless people are releasing them somewhere!

 

[Bobzarry]

FWIW .....I have not seen anything that will increase a pod population more then feeding the tank on flake food. Flake food is very easy for pods to brake down. I have seen a 30 gal tank fed exclusively on flake food house a pair of manderins for about 5 years and the pod population didn't look as if the manderins were putting a dent in it. I currently run a 55 gal reef and mostly feed flake. My manderin has been in there just over 3 years and is nice and fat.


as long as you have plenty of hiding places for the pods, be it pod piles or lots of live rock with plenty of sections too tight for predators to wipe out the population. And feed the pod population well enough for them to reproduce you should be able to maintain a good, healthy, pod population.

I would suggest to anyone planning to purchase a manderin to first start feeding their pods in order to increase their numbers.


Bob