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  • Feeding Mandarin Gobies

    Ok, so i saw a mandarin goby at petco and having heard that they would do fine if trained to eat frozen bbs i decided to buy him without noticing its sunken in belly, now i'm panicking trying make sure he'll make it so i did a bit a research and found out a few stuff i can do

    1. feed cyclop-eeze. So would the frozen, gel (from instant ocean), or freeze dried work better?
    i'm assuming the frozen cyclops offered by san fransico bay is the same stuff, just wondering cause i noticed a big difference in price when compared to other brands.

    2. feed frozen blood worms, like the ones used in freshwater. i'm just curious; would bloodworms hurt my blenny or any other sw livestock i decide to add later?

    SO

    3. now this i'm just wondering. Would Kent Zooplex be a good thing to try?

    4. What else besides pods do mandarins eat?

    5. Does any one harvest some pods and wouldn't mind hooking it up OR does any one have any more good suggestions?

    The goby is in a 7 gallon so i rather train it to eat other stuff rather than harvest the pods. Later on i'll try dipping some some frozen bbs, pellets, and whatever other food i get in some garlic boost. In the mean time any support is appreciated.

  • #2
    Keeping it in a confined tank to train it to eat is the best bet. Not having to fight for food would give it the best chance at survival for right now until it is healthy again.

    The difference in the frozen foods is quality, Freeze dried is probably not going to work and personally think you will have just as hard of a time trying to get it to feed on frozen.

    Blood worms will not harm anything but with most all frozens the stuff it's frozen in contains or will produce a lot of waste.

    Kent zooplex along with any other additive wont hurt but wont suffice either unless you are dipping the food and it's actually eating it.

    You can try and harvest or hatch live brine shrimp and hope that it goes for that since it's live and moving.

    You can buy live pods in a bottle and jump start the tank or constantly buy the bottles of live pods to feed the mandarin but I think it would be cheaper to return the mandarin to petco or just let it die trying.

    Most mandarin have a hard time surviving in large, established reef tanks.
    700g Mini-Monster tank

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    • #3
      What you can try to do is build a dome like contraption which would block off a part of the water column from any flow and from other fish and squirt the food into that and hope it attracts the attention of the mandarin. Another option is to flood the tank with food and just constantly keep up with maintenance.
      700g Mini-Monster tank

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      • #4
        I'm sorry, but i'm gonna have to be THAT guy....this is why mandarins have such a poor rep for surviving in aquaria. I was in exatly the same position just a few months ago but you HAVE to say no to mandarins until EVERYTHING is just so for them.
        If you bought him without knowing whether he will eat frozen or not, the chances are fairly solid that it will NOT eat frozen, and training them isn't a task thats accomplished in a week or two. To be perfectly blunt with you, if he's not already eating frozen and you are only just beginning to train him, he's gonna die of starvation before he accepts the frozen (i know, SOME people get lucky, they are few an far between, mandarins are just about the pickiest fish you could have chosen, they will willingly starve themselves to death if the food isn't what they like/want.)
        Next up, how old is your tank? most people recommend waiting at LEAST a year, more suggest even longer, before you introduce a mandarin, this gives the population of pods time to expand and colonize...this SHOULD be the best way of doing it but having said that...
        A 7 gallon??? your mandarin will eat from morning til night, constantly hunting the pods out, he will DECIMATE your pods within a week in that small a space, and he won't stop going till that tank is completely bare of life. 7 gals really isn't enough space to support enough live food to keep a mandarin happy in the long term.

        All of this having been said, people do crazy things in this hobby, they go against the grain and break the rules in every possible way, and for every rule broken, you'll find stories of how breaking the rules brought unmitigated success and sticking to the formula has brought utter destruction!

        at the end of the day it comes down to how much time/effort/money you're willing to sink into him.
        at the very least if you are planning to keep him, you need to budget 20 bucks a WEEK for a fresh bottle of tigger-pods, this will probably be the only thing he will accept until he learns to eat the frozen. i know that sounds a lot, but that guy will eat, and eat, and eat, those bottles don't go far if they go straight into a DT.

        as for training him, start him on something you know he will eat - something live, tigger-pods, live mysis if you can find it (DON'T go with baby brine shrimp they're cheap and readily available, for a reason. they're 90% water and have such a low nutritional value as to make them almost worthless imho, you difinitely need to look more at mysis), then slowly start adding in small amounts of frozen to the live foor, not much, like maybe only 5% frozen to begin with, feed him that way for a week, then move up to 10% frozen...take it very slowly though, he'll be picky about it and you'll probably still see a lot of your frozen sinking and being ignored, but patience is the key!!!

        hope some of that helps, i know i fell in love with the mandarins myself which is why i went and read every single article i could before i madde the jump, and having read the articles...i need to wait before i can make the jump!
        Last edited by BiGPiNK; 12-15-2011, 09:19 AM.

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        • #5
          Ok just got home and he seems to be doin ok, apparently I did have quite a bit of pods. Someone had turned off the light so I turned it on and saw a few moving on the glass, and he did seem to be nibbleing at the glass last nite as soon as he got out the bag.

          As for mandarins in a nano or not like ek said they have even done bad in big setups. And being that they eat all the time I guess even a big tank may become insufficient to produce enough pods. I really believe training them is the best way to maintain them based on what I read.

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          • #6
            Update, I spend 30 in pods and reef caviar trying to feed the mandarin but I guess he was just already in too bad shape when I got him and I found him stuck to the filter this morning. I still see a lot of pods which he should've wiped out of the nano so he must of Ben too far gone.

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            • #7
              Hey, I just want to say that you get kudos for trying to save the poor little guy and for noticing that he was in trouble at PETCO (you did more for him than they ever would have-and personally if i was that little fishy i would much rather die in someone's aquarium who was trying to help me than at the back of a PETCO). yes-i have to agree that mandarin fish should not be kept by 99% of aquarists due to their horribly picky needs. Although, they are absolutely stunning precious looking little fish, they really shouldnt be kept in home aquariums permanently.

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              • #8
                Reef Suitability: Mandarin fish are one of the most
                commonly sold fish, yet they are unfortunately one of the most likely to perish
                in the average reef tank. The reason for this is their very finicky feeding
                habits. Many mandarins will only eat live amphipods and copepods (pods) which
                are found in sufficient numbers only in larger and well established reef tanks.
                The minimum tank requirement is generally stated as 55 gallon with 50lbs or more
                of live rock. This is based on feeding requirements and not space requirements
                as the Mandarin is a very slow, docile fish. Perhaps more important than tank
                size is how heavily fed and nutrient rich a tank is, since this type of tank
                will generally support a higher pod population than tanks run under more lean
                conditions.
                Disposition: Very non-aggressive to other fish and
                other fish seem to pay them no attention. 2 males will fight, so they should
                only be kept singly or in male/female pairs. Mandarins spend their days
                carefully checking over the live rock and sand looking for tasty tidbits to
                eat.


                Feeding
                :
                As noted above, feeding can be a major issue with
                Mandarins. Some will take foods such as frozen brine shrimp and bloodworms.
                Others will refuse to take anything but live foods. Mandarins are extremely
                slow and hover, much like a hummingbird using their front fins while looking for
                food. Even Mandarins that take prepared foods have a hard time competing with
                faster fish for the morsels. One suggestion I have heard that makes good sense,
                especially in smaller tanks that don't support a large pod population is to
                build something called a 'pod pile'. This is a few small rocks stacked into a
                pile into which small pieces of shrimp or similar food can be inserted every
                couple of days. This pile of rocks provides shelter and a food supply for the
                pods which allows them to rapidly breed and provide food for the Mandarin.

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                • #9
                  I have in the past heard someone caring for Mandarins in a 10 gallon by it self once (nano reef) and he apparently kept him in there for years with some problems. His lil or deal was that he bred and housed pods in a 5 gal. (nothing but pods) that was up with pods for a year or more. he even added a bottle or 2 to keep the population up. Even with that he told me it was still a pain in the *** at times. so all in all if you ever get a mandarin i'd say keep it in a 75 + tank that has been up and running for about a year or 2.

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                  • #10
                    I've heard the captive bread ora mandarins do well with frozen foods

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                    • #11
                      Originally posted by electricblue View Post
                      I've heard the captive bread ora mandarins do well with frozen foods
                      you do sometimes but, be sure you see the goby eat the frozen food before you buy it. sure they're gonna say he does but, in reality like any store will do to make a quick buck (sometimes) they'll just say it to get you to buy it. if it's captive bred and said to be eating frozen ask to watch it eat before you buy (i just repeated myself :P)

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