getting a mandarin to eat

[jason604]

Originally Posted by asylumdown

Well this was over the course of 10 hours. The QT tank is bare bottom and he's the only thing in it, so it can take it's time.

And between my 21 fish, every day I feed:
3 cubes of hikari mysis
2 cubes of PE mysis
1 cube of frozen adult brine
1 cube of spirulina brine
1 (sometimes 2) cube of ocean nutrition formula 1
A decent chunk (about 2 cubes worth) of Pacifica plankton
2 mantilla clams
2 or 3 sheets of nori
A healthy portion of crushed aegis flakes and freeze dried cyclopeeze via an auto-feeder

Clams in the morning, nori and flakes in the afternoon (if I'm not home I sometimes skip the nori), frozen in the evening.

My fish are fat. Hopefully the mandarin does well in the display.

Holy crap. That seems like it takes a ton of time
And effort to feed your fishes each day!! The green mandarin that I got yesterday seems to just hide in the caves in my DT and won't come out. He just lays in there. I squirt a bunch of frozen mysis in there and I do se him pecking it. Is this a good sign even tho he just hides n seems very slow? Also I tried hatching dry brine shrimp but still didn't see any hatch yet in a 24hr period. Used tank water in a bottle with an air pump.

[asylumdown]

Originally Posted by Myka

Hey that's great! You can also make a little rubble pile in the corner of your display where pods can hide inside and breed in a place where the Mandarin can't get to them.

Yah I set one up in a corner after I bought the first one. It took the last of my rubble so I'll make it bigger when I get to smashing my last piece of Marco rock in to tiny pieces. It's crazy how white it is compared to the rest of my rocks! Over 2 years the Marco rock that's not covered in coralline, sponges or tube worms has turned dark grey. It's already got a dusting of brown and at night I can see bristle worms have moved in, so the pods won't be far behind. Hopefully the mysid shrimps that now live within the branches of my corals will move in as well.