New mandarin dragonet

[Etienne 97]

My lfs have small mandarin dragonet around 1.5" i see him pecking i don't know yet if it is a captive one i will know more tomorrow am thinking to setup a small tank like a 5.5 gallon with a hob as a qt tank am not gonna use any medication. If i buy it i would like to put it in that tank to traine it to eat frosen food i have some pods at home and i can hatch some brine shrimp i also would like to observe it for some disease. Should i put live sand in that tank am also thinking to put my "old" floss from my main tank into the hob i would have some advice to succes if i decide to buy it

 

[Cheese Griller]

It is not recommended to QT mandarins because of their caloric demands. If you have an adequately sized display add it directly. It will not survive in a 5.5. They are very disease resistant so it should be fine.

 

[Thalasstronaut]

I personally wouldn’t. Training to take frozen food is a mistake, imo, unless you’re doing that as a supplement to pods. You should have a strong pod population in place and then add the mandarin. You always run the risk of them going off of frozen and if you don’t have the pod population to support them, it can be difficult to catch up.

I feed fresh hatched baby brine to my tank and my mandarin seems to like it. I also culture pods in my sump and have a good level in my tank as is. I feed fish and reef frenzy as well but I don’t recall ever seeing him pick at it. Not to say he doesn’t when I’m not around but he doesn’t dart after the “dump” of food like the other fish.

 

[winxp_man]

if it’s not trained already, don’t try training it. You might end up with a dead fish. If you have a bigger tank put in a bunch of pods Tigris and Tisbe is what I run in my tank. They eat about 1 k a day. So you want to have a good amount in the tank. Otherwise don’t get one or it will not end well.

 

[Etienne 97]

In my display i see a lot of pods when my light is turn off on all my rock i also have a fudge to "keep them" i also see them in there what do you qualify as a good amount ?

 

[Etienne 97]

I personally wouldn’t. Training to take frozen food is a mistake, imo, unless you’re doing that as a supplement to pods. You should have a strong pod population in place and then add the mandarin. You always run the risk of them going off of frozen and if you don’t have the pod population to support them, it can be difficult to catch up.

I feed fresh hatched baby brine to my tank and my mandarin seems to like it. I also culture pods in my sump and have a good level in my tank as is. I feed fish and reef frenzy as well but I don’t recall ever seeing him pick at it. Not to say he doesn’t when I’m not around but he doesn’t dart after the “dump” of food like the other fish.

I was thinking to train it on frosen as a supplement not as a main diet