Will this work as a dragonet feeding station? Thoughts appreciated

[lobstermeet]

Hi All,

Made the classic mistake of buying an unresearched species at the LFS this weekend. All of my gracillaria macroalgae disappeared without a trace over the course of 2 weeks and at the same time I had an amphipod explosion so my theory is that they ate it all. I have a 20 gallon AIO and I swear there are thousands of amphipods at this point, they completely cover the back panel at night and clog my filter sock and leave molts everywhere. Explained this to my LFS and the guy sold me a Ruby Red Dragonet saying he'd take care of them. During acclimation I looked the species up online and saw that they're expert only and very finicky eaters. I probably should have returned him but then he flared his dorsal fin at me and I was hooked so now I'm determined to help this buddy thrive!

I think he can eat some of the baby amphipods but the large ones are too big to fit in his mouth. I saw him go for one and the bug got away. I also didn't realize that they prefer copepods and can eat thousands of them per day. I have a population of them as well but certainly not enough to sustain him. I ordered everything I need to turn my center chamber into a fuge and got a pod subscription but feeding pods exclusively is gonna be cost prohibitive. He's already gone through $80 worth of Tigger pods in four days!

I saw an article on reef builders showing how to make a hatchling brine shrimp feeding station out of tubing, a plastic container and pantihose. I built one but wasn't happy with the results. It is very unsightly and there's nowhere I can hide it in my tank that's both out of sight and where he will also have a good chance of stumbling upon it. I wondered if it would be possible to just run some tubing into the center of a porous rock and see if that would have the same the effect. Sure enough I had a rock laying around that had a perfectly sized hole for some black tubing I had laying around from my ATO setup. It even had a crevice that clamped the tubing perfectly so that it can neatly run up the back panel.

Apparently the baby shrimp are attracted to light so the idea is to hatch them and squirt them into the tube with a pipette and they will slowly make their way out around the rock where my Dragonet can have at them! What do you all think the chances are that this will work? Once he's used to grazing there ill try to ween him onto frozen food.

 

[NowGlazeIT]

Great idea! I like how the rock disguises the feeder. Mandarin are slow eaters. If the feeder releases food like a broadcast feeding then the mandarin won’t be able to pick at it slowly as they like to do. If you put a screen mesh over the exit, you can trap the food. This way the mandarin have time to pick at it.

 

[DaJMasta]

Culturing pods would be an option, catching him and training him to eat prepared food then feeding with the pumps off could also be an option, but either is going to take some research and some setup time. If you can get it to come out when you feed, you can also try spot feeding near the sand bed and just leaving the pumps off - especially after a normal feeding so other creatures won't compete too heavily.

You would be surprised at what can fit in his mouth, though, it can stretch a lot larger than it looks and unless your dragonet is really small, it can likely swallow a PE mysis or larger whole. My mandarin dragonets can fit things about 2-3x their mouth size in their mouth, and have swallowed bloodworms close to a third of their total length with a few attempts.

 

[lobstermeet]

Great idea! I like how the rock disguises the feeder. Mandarin are slow eaters. If the feeder releases food like a broadcast feeding then the mandarin won’t be able to pick at it slowly as they like to do. If you put a screen mesh over the exit, you can trap the food. This way the mandarin have time to pick at it.

Yeah the hope is that the hatchling brine shrimp come out slowly and he can pick them off 1 by one. It should release them right in the center of the rock so it'll take them some time to reach the light. I blocked the biggest hole with a snail shell so that they need to crawl around it. If they make their way out too fast ill have to find some kind of screen or something to slow them down.

 

[lobstermeet]

Culturing pods would be an option, catching him and training him to eat prepared food then feeding with the pumps off could also be an option, but either is going to take some research and some setup time. If you can get it to come out when you feed, you can also try spot feeding near the sand bed and just leaving the pumps off - especially after a normal feeding so other creatures won't compete too heavily.

You would be surprised at what can fit in his mouth, though, it can stretch a lot larger than it looks and unless your dragonet is really small, it can likely swallow a PE mysis or larger whole. My mandarin dragonets can fit things about 2-3x their mouth size in their mouth, and have swallowed bloodworms close to a third of their total length with a few attempts.

Yeah I'm looking into it. I have also read that white worms that freshwater ppl use work as well and still wiggle for a few hours in saltwater. Brine shrimp seems the simplest though so I'm gonna start there. He is much smaller than most mandarins I see, he's maybe 1.5 inches.