Mandarin training to eat frozen

sredzins · Sep 5, 2013

I picked up a young mandarin yesterday and decided to try my hand at training it to eat frozen. She is in a breeder box for now. Any advice on how to get her to accept the frozen? I will be trying a combination of cyclopeeze and pe mysis

I have a mature refugium as well just in case.

pam0630 · Sep 5, 2013

ive always wanted to try a mandarin, but i hear they are really hard...again was told to make sure i get one that is eating food...

sredzins · Sep 5, 2013

They're an awesome fish. I have had one before but it was already starving at the lfs and I tried to bring it back but it was to far gone. They're a hardy fish but the feeding habits are picky. It's tough to find one that readily accepts prepared foods, but I figured it would get more attention to train it to do so from me than the lfs. And it's young still so well have to see

philr · Sep 5, 2013

I had an oscellated mandarin. It readily ate frozen brine shrimp. When I fed them the shrimp would be picked up by the tank currents, and the fish would wait for some to float by then eat what it wanted. I always watched to make sure it got at least 4 shrimp daily. I had the fish for about 4 months, then one day it simply dissappeared! I mean it just vanished. No sign of it and I never knew what happened!

NanaReefer · Sep 5, 2013

Here's how I trained my Scooter Dragonet! I'm using Nutramar Ove, Rods Complete, Reef Frenzy and a little Hikari gut loaded Brine shrimp.

Eienna · Sep 5, 2013

sredzins said:
I picked up a young mandarin yesterday and decided to try my hand at training it to eat frozen. She is in a breeder box for now. Any advice on how to get her to accept the frozen? I will be trying a combination of cyclopeeze and pe mysis

I have a mature refugium as well just in case.

I would wait and let her settle in first. Bottled live copepods for the first couple months is a good idea.

I have heard that Nutramar Ova is a good food to get them started on frozens. I didn't end up needing it. XD

The mysis might be too big for her mouth, but brine shrimp does not contain adequate nutrition, so unless you can find a way to make the mysis smaller you might want to go with the ova. Mine likes New Life Spectrum Small Fish pellets, as well. It may be willing to sample bloodworms...mine seems to like them. I don't know much about cyclop-eeze but it may work :)