[Pan]

Originally Posted by halwake

Hey, we just went through this with a mandarin about 4 months ago. I had all intentions to (farm) pods and so on but I was able to get my male green mandarin eating frozen food quite quickly. He is not a ORA Mandarin, got him from Big Als. I put him in a breeder net floating in the main tank for about a week. Here I introduced frozen brine shrimp. To my surprise after a day or two he started sampling it. Then I started to add a bit of frozen Mysis. He was not overly interested but picked at it. About a week in he escaped into the main tank. I was hoping he would keep eating frozen but only went after pods. He showed very little interest in frozen food. After a week and him getting skinnier I decided to re-capture him. Once I got him back into the net we started over again. To my delight he started to accept very small Mysis, (Hikari brand). We tried blood worms now, mysis, brine shrimp, and he even tried some flake. After I was sure he was eating good, I released him back into the tank. Here we spot fed him with the pumps off using a feeding tube or turkey baster. He came to associate the tube with food and came to it as soon as it was in the water. Unfortunatly so did the other faster fish, so we started using the mandarin diner approach. Small glass jar in the corner that just the mandarin can go in and take his time to eat. Works great, he is always going in there looking for food. He won't touch pellets or flake really but will gobble up and frozen preparations. I think the key is to get a plump healthy one to begin with that will last the initial training phase and do not release them until they are taking frozen very well. Wish I could take credit for these ideas but the articles and links were posted by members on the site. Search Mandarin diners and training mandarin to eat frozen food. My guy is healty, happy, active, and in a 36 gallon tank. I gave up on pod farming, much easier just to train him to begin with. All together took approx. 4 weeks but remember after the 1st week he escaped and we had to start over again. I would guess 2-3 weeks total in the breeder net you would be fine.

Mandarin Diner...Good old Melev.

http://www.melevsreef.com/mandarin_diner.html