Do fish sleep spooning?!

[astrofish]

I put these dragonets in an isolation box to train them to eat pellets a few days ago and today I walked in at night… and found them full-on spooning in the corner

I had no idea fish slept cuddled up like this… are mine just weird, or is this actually normal among dragnets?

 

[StartingATank]

That is so adorable!!!

 

[kevgib67]

I put these dragonets in an isolation box to train them to eat pellets a few days ago and today I walked in at night… and found them full-on spooning in the corner

I had no idea fish slept cuddled up like this… are mine just weird, or is this actually normal among dragnets?

Ya, I’ve never seen that before!

 

[Impunitus]

While I've never caught mine doing this, it appears that yours do in fact spoon

 

[KrisReef]

That is so adorable!!!

I am highly offended by the posting of this pornographic image that clearly violates the “family friendly” code of conduct required by users of this site.

But seriously, I think that the op should probably add some kind of cover habitat features into the confinement to allow them to get more comfortable in order to encourage them to eat.

I don’t think they are going to eat anything until they have a proper place to relax in the tank?

 

[astrofish]

That is so adorable!!!

So true!! I was like aww but poor ruby dragonet (he’s the smallest one) at the bottom

 

[astrofish]

I put these dragonets in an isolation box to train them to eat pellets a few days ago and today I walked in at night… and found them full-on spooning in the corner

I had no idea fish slept cuddled up like this… are mine just weird, or is this actually normal among dragnets?

Turns out fish are more human than I thought, ha!

 

[astrofish]

While I've never caught mine doing this, it appears that yours do in fact spoon

I’ve seen green mandarin couple sleeping spooning once, but trust me I was really surprised this time… Three different dragonet species all spooning each other

 

[astrofish]

That is so adorable!!!

Haha good one, you are right!

As for dragonets, I have like 8 and fortunately they all eat pellets. I got two red ruby scooter 5 days ago from LFS and they started eating pellets by day 2 in the isolation box.

Yeah, I think making them comfortable is important but I usually don’t put rock or anything while getting them to eat but this time I’ve put a rock a few days ago since I saw the green mandarin chasing the spotted mandarin a bit once (no nipping or aggression). Funny how they now sleep together! Haha

 

[Impunitus]

Do you find them coming to the surface to eat pellets or do you need to use sinking / use something that gets them low in the tank? I've wanted to add a mandarin to my tank but wasn't sure how to best get food to them once they are accepting pellets / frozen / what is in my auto feeder (reef jerky).

 

[astrofish]

That is so adorable!!!

I am highly offended by the posting of this pornographic image that clearly violates the “family friendly” code of conduct required by users of this site.

But seriously, I think that the op should probably add some kind of cover habitat features into the confinement to allow them to get more comfortable in order to encourage them to eat.

I don’t think they are going to eat anything until they have a proper place to relax in the tank?

Haha good one, you are right!

As for dragonets, I have like 8 and fortunately they all eat pellets. I got two red ruby scooter 5 days ago from LFS and they started eating pellets by day 2 in the isolation box.

Yeah, I think making them comfortable is important but I usually don’t put rock or anything while getting them to eat but this time I’ve put a rock a few days ago since I saw the green mandarin chasing the spotted mandarin a bit once (no nipping or aggression). Funny how they now sleep together!

 

[KrisReef]

It's an unnatural abomination, is what it is!

Thanks for posting the cluster!

 

[astrofish]

Do you find them coming to the surface to eat pellets or do you need to use sinking / use something that gets them low in the tank? I've wanted to add a mandarin to my tank but wasn't sure how to best get food to them once they are accepting pellets / frozen / what is in my auto feeder (reef jerky).

It depends on mandarin, but yes I’ve seen some come up and eating pellets that are floating on the surface although that’s rare :)

As for food, you definitely should use sinking pellets that are small enough for mandarin’s mouth. I use Hikari’s megabytes red and Otohime b2 (those are from Japan but I’m sure you can get in the states or something similar easily).

The best way to get them to eat is put them in a small isolation box (you don’t want too big as you want to increase the chance of mandarin finding pellets) and put live brine shrimp, and pellets together. As they start eating brines, they’ll accidentally eat pellets on the bottom, and they’d start eating. If you do that for two weeks, I think most of the time they’ll be eating pellets by then. I have 8 dragonets and I had trained all of them to eat this way! Also it’s a lot easier if you have another dragonet eating pellets, they’ll start imitating. That’s why I used my spotted and green mandarin as props (they already eat pellets) to get the new ruby dragonets eat and they were eating pellets by day 2