Dragonet trainers, should i give up training on pellets?

[rowenaad]

Hello, i have brought home a dragonet a few days ago. He's a curious little fish and would try any food i feed. However, out of live baby brine shrimp, frozen brine shrimp, frozen mysis, ocean nutrition formula one, new life spectrum thera a+ small I offered, he has tried every single one of them, but would spit out frozen brine and both pellets. I have a 20G no refugium with tons of pods now. He's the only pod eater, but i dont think the natural pod population will sustain in the long run. I'm feeding phyto daily, culturing copepods and hatching bbs so he should have enough food while im home. I really want him to take pellets so when im away for a month or more and friend would only be able to feed pellet and phyto, he would still have enough food.

I have tried mixing pellet with mysis at different ratios or offer pellets only either as dry or soaked. He never hesitate to try but would always spit them out. From threads i read, the more difficulty is more around getting the fish to try, but mine are trying but not eating. Is there still a chance it would later decide to eat it or at what point should i give up trying? TIA

 

[Coral Memere]

Hello, i have brought home a dragonet a few days ago. He's a curious little fish and would try any food i feed. However, out of live baby brine shrimp, frozen brine shrimp, frozen mysis, ocean nutrition formula one, new life spectrum thera a+ small I offered, he has tried every single one of them, but would spit out frozen brine and both pellets. I have a 20G no refugium with tons of pods now. He's the only pod eater, but i dont think the natural pod population will sustain in the long run. I'm feeding phyto daily, culturing copepods and hatching bbs so he should have enough food while im home. I really want him to take pellets so when im away for a month or more and friend would only be able to feed pellet and phyto, he would still have enough food.

I have tried mixing pellet with mysis at different ratios or offer pellets only either as dry or soaked. He never hesitate to try but would always spit them out. From threads i read, the more difficulty is more around getting the fish to try, but mine are trying but not eating. Is there still a chance it would later decide to eat it or at what point should i give up trying? TIA

Mandarins are hunters. They spend all day plucking little things out of rocks and sand with their beaks. They want live food. That's why they're considered (as i roll my eyes) "expert" level fish. I have a mandarin tank and hatch baby brine every 3 days and dose pods weekly. I even use the BBS feeder, occasionally. Mostly I just squirt it all into the rock to let the babies hunt. I've heard that people can train mandarins to eat frozen, but I have yet to meet one that thrives.

Search for "PaulB" and "mandarin" on here and you'll learn everything I did with my first one. Now I have 7. The BBS hatching kit is < $25 on the A zon.

 

[rowenaad]

Mandarins are hunters. They spend all day plucking little things out of rocks and sand with their beaks. They want live food. That's why they're considered (as i roll my eyes) "expert" level fish. I have a mandarin tank and hatch baby brine every 3 days and dose pods weekly. I even use the BBS feeder, occasionally. Mostly I just squirt it all into the rock to let the babies hunt. I've heard that people can train mandarins to eat frozen, but I have yet to meet one that thrives.

Search for "PaulB" and "mandarin" on here and you'll learn everything I did with my first one. Now I have 7. The BBS hatching kit is < $25 on the A zon.

yea i have already made my PaulB BBS feeder and dosing additional pods, but still wanna see how much chance i may have putting him on pellet, so i wont be too worried on longer vacations when no one would help on dosing live food. while he already eating frozen mysis but I couldnt find too much info other then one training guide on getting them to eat pellets

 

[ReefQuestCorals]

My target mandarin had learned to eat frozen food in my 29g nano, but this is rare and I did not attempt to train the little girl either. I just noticed she was picking up frozen one day after feeding. Prior to this I would feed the pod population 2-3 times a week with reef roids which sustained what was needed to keep her fat and happy. She has since been moved into my larger system

I agree with above statement though. May look at starting a pod subscription while away to feed the tank and make it easier for who is watching over it. Could always have them directly shipped to your caregiver so you do not run the risk of the package sitting outside for long periods.

 

[rowenaad]

My target mandarin had learned to eat frozen food in my 29g nano, but this is rare and I did not attempt to train the little girl either. I just noticed she was picking up frozen one day after feeding. Prior to this I would feed the pod population 2-3 times a week with reef roids which sustained what was needed to keep her fat and happy. She has since been moved into my larger system

I agree with above statement though. May look at starting a pod subscription while away to feed the tank and make it easier for who is watching over it. Could always have them directly shipped to your caregiver so you do not run the risk of the package sitting outside for long periods.

Thanks! how would i not thought about a pod delivery loll.

also I found ocean nutrition has a off the shelf baby brine shrimp product that can sit in room temperature. Does anyone have experience feeding that to dragonets?

 

[Lavey29]

I have a very mature 65g tank and still had to add jars of pids weekly to sustain Mandy. Pellets or frozen never worked.

 

[DaJMasta]

How long have you given it? Once they are sampling the foods it's usually only a matter of days before they reliably eat them, provided they are exposed to that one every day and that they're of decent (non-spoiled) quality.

Usually in training mine (typically frozen food is accepted first) they will go from being afraid of feedings to hunting around after feedings to trying something and maybe spitting it out to eating it in the course of 2-3 weeks, start to finish. In a larger space it would take longer, since that initial bite is a smaller random chance, but it's quite likely yours is already eating some.

Try looking for longer and feeding with the pumps off so they can hunt things down quicker. Shouldn't be required the whole time - mine will swim off the bottom to grab falling food at this point - but helps find and consider initially.

 

[rowenaad]

How long have you given it? Once they are sampling the foods it's usually only a matter of days before they reliably eat them, provided they are exposed to that one every day and that they're of decent (non-spoiled) quality.

Usually in training mine (typically frozen food is accepted first) they will go from being afraid of feedings to hunting around after feedings to trying something and maybe spitting it out to eating it in the course of 2-3 weeks, start to finish. In a larger space it would take longer, since that initial bite is a smaller random chance, but it's quite likely yours is already eating some.

Try looking for longer and feeding with the pumps off so they can hunt things down quicker. Shouldn't be required the whole time - mine will swim off the bottom to grab falling food at this point - but helps find and consider initially.

Thanks today is day 4 in a breeding net and responding to the turkey baster im using to feed him. Every single day he would give the pellets a try a few times but spit out. Im slightly worried if i keep him longer in there as he's belly is sunken tho not too skinny yet. I think i might just give up here lolll and hoping one day he would decide to eat pellet since he's curious of any food i offered

 

[rowenaad]

okay thanks everyone i think ill stop here for training and relying on dosing pods. I have released him in the tank. He looks a lot more nervous than in the breeding net. Hope he will get comfortable here.

But he seem to have zero survival skills and keep trying to get close to the watchman goby who’s giant and somewhat territorial and aggressive. He just stayed still when the goby attacks him but the goby backed off for some reason. Please get alone before i can find the goby a bigger home.

 

[Naekuh]

can i say i give you mad props for even attempting it, and thinking you could succeed?

I have tried many times, and even gave up on frozen even, to ultimately give up on the entire species entirely as i did not want to contribute to the extinction of the species from me trying to keep one. (sarcasm)

But i have lost too many, and only managed to keep 1 in my friends tank because she somehow magically pulled the genetic lottery in the mandarin being either too stupid, or too hungry, to eat whatever was in front of its mouth.

 

[DaJMasta]

Thanks today is day 4 in a breeding net and responding to the turkey baster im using to feed him. Every single day he would give the pellets a try a few times but spit out. Im slightly worried if i keep him longer in there as he's belly is sunken tho not too skinny yet. I think i might just give up here lolll and hoping one day he would decide to eat pellet since he's curious of any food i offered

Your choice is yours to make, but 4 days is not nearly enough time for them to be able to consistently identify food. If you're getting attempts at eating it 4 days in, you're probably on the way to quickly training them - I've had dragonets not be seen trying the foods I offered for a week.

If you still have it in the net and are worried about the belly, you can feed copepods, amphipods, or artemia nauplii in with them and they will respond - actually, feeding shortly after the prepared food is best because they associate feedings with foods they like quicker. What's usually accepted first for my trainings is frozen bloodworms, I think partly because they eat marine worms in nature, and then often mysis shrimp or shrimp resembling things (one of the first things I saw one mandarin eat was a krill head which was big enough it took several minutes trying to get it down.)

People build up training a dragonet onto prepared foods as being an impossible task or having it not eat anything substantial in a day being some horrific death sentence but neither is true. I've trained more than half a dozen mandarins and ruby reds onto prepared foods in a breeder box and normal time to reliable acceptance shortly after feeding is 2-3 weeks. I feed twice a day (vacuuming out old food once a day) and more recently add extra copepods/amphipods/artemia nauplii with feedings in the first few days to make sure they get some nutrition and to get them used to feedings from me (the first few days they typically hide when I show up with a turkey baster.)

What's more, while it's not good for them not to eat for a couple of days, it's also not going to kill them unless they are already very thin. This is hard to tell from the top, and you don't want your animals not to be eating, but with a healthy specimen in, you have a lot of margin in terms of training time even if it's only getting a little in the beginning. It's also worth mentioning that using a breeder box is really the right way to do this - by confining the fish to a small space, you dramatically increase the chance that when it's pecking around randomly before it can identify the food it eats something, and that's sort of the key to it being able to recognize the prepared foods as its food.

 

[Timbo13]

I might get some stick here but I've had my mandarin in a reefer nano (21 gallon + 7 gallon sump) for 5 years, no fuge. He eats whatever I put in the tank. Mainly he lives off blood worms and brine shrimp (both frozen). Has probably never seen a pod in his life. He's never thin... but never fat. Here's a picture of him. He lives in the tank with a clownfish, yellow watchman goby and until recently a tailspot blenny. Keeping a mandarin can be done, but sometimes it's annoying making sure he gets enough food each time. I think it helped that he would see the blenny eating and try it. To me it's worth the effort, he's my favorite fish! Keep at it. I've attached pictures

 

[W31Olds]

My Mandarin will eat TDO Chromaboost Pellets but only in the Morning when she is extra hungry. She will usually eat about 10 pieces of slightly crushed small. The rest of the day she cruises for PODS. Since they are sight hunters and sleep at night they are very hungry in the morning so that would be the best time to train using Target Feeding on pellets or frozen. The biggest problem I have is trying to distract all the big fish in my Tank while feeding her. It is interesting that all my fish (Big Tangs, large Foxface, Emperor Angel, etc.) ignore her completely, but will bully in on any food in her area. Oh, and be mindful of the size of the Food. It has to be the right size (small) or they will just spit it out.

 

[Paul B]

I feel mandarins are the easiest, less maintenance, long lived, fish there is. I have never bought a pod or a pellet and they live about 10 years. If your tank isn't mature enough for them to hunt enough on their own, they can be difficult.

 

[rowenaad]

This little boi has finally learned the feeder. Although it is fattening up without being able to use it, this definitely blows it belly up. Best invention @Paul B thank you .

If any one is looking for exact mesh size as i did, ive tried a few sizes and this is 267 microns and works perfect.

 

[Sam7]

I have two a spotted and a ruby red and they eat any food i put in the tank plus hunts pods non stop. They always come and eat with the rest of the fish whenever i come to the tank they show up. I have found them to be easy to care for with a mature tank. I have never bought the over priced micro biota ones. Just have a mature tank and buy one at any store they do fine.

 

[LeBon]

oh, i was gonna suggest Nike