Mandarins onto frozen

I ordered a sexed pair of mandarins from Blue Zoo Aquatics. Because I was worried about buying them sight unseen, they graciously agreed to hold them for me until they were consistently eating and healthy. I got them 5 days ago and I thought I'd start a thread on training them onto frozen/prepared food. I have each in its own breeder net in the tank to separate them because I didn't want to add the stress of another cell mate and this way I can see if each is eating all its food.

I'm feeding them live enriched brine shrimp. The first day, they nibbled but weren't too interested. The second day, they gladly gobbled them up. Now they are quite the voracious eaters. I tried mixing in some frozen mysis with their brine shrimp, but it was a no go. So I'm going to go get some frozen brine shrimp and try that. So far they aren't intersted in frozen, but they are eating, active and appear to be very healthy.

I am short of time, so I will add pictures later, I just wanted to get this started.

I figured I should put this in the Aquaculture section, because I'm hoping these will spawn, in which case I'll start up the copepod culture and hopefully get some youngins out of this.

Best of luck to you. Interested in reading it!

You could try some hikari bloodworms. Usually trigger a strong feeding response.

I do have those, I'll give 'em a try. Thanks D

Good luck

Yep they can be picky , Good luck

They didn't like the bloodworms, I'll keep tryin.

Success!!! I bought some frozen brine shrimp and mixed them with live brine shrimp. I think the key was that the frozen brine shrimp are neutrally buoyant, so they float around the water and have a similar movement to the live shrimp. The frozen mysis and bloodworms just sank to the bottom. So after a while they started eating more and more dead brine shrimp until they didn't even need them to be floating. Even got the girl to eat a blood worm.

This whole thing took maybe an hour, I was expecting it to take much longer. So I'm happy, the mandarins are fat and healthy and are getting much more used to me. Still want to get them associating me with food so I can feed them easily in the tank, but they're almost ok with me sticking my hand in their little nets.

I'll try to get some pictures up tonight. I'm procrastinating on a big paper due Tomorrow, so I gotta do that first.

By the way, those mandarins sure can eat a lot, I can see why they starve in tanks so often.

Right on Ben, can't wait to see pic's.

All right cool

Glad to hear there eating!

OK picture time!!

This is the two breeder nets I'm holding the fish in until their trained.




This is the male, the shotglass was there for feeding time.




And the female




This is the brine shrimp holding tank. In front is what I use to feed/enrich the brine shrimp.

Looks good! Now that they are eating the brine its just a matter of time. If you use a feeding dish they get used to going there for food and it makes introducing new foods alot easyer. I am very happy for you and GL on you spawning...Remember, eggs are clear and if they release with lights off or just actinics you most likely will not be able to see them. With any luck they will spawn for you regularly.

Nice pics!!

Wow and pretty quick too!

Originally Posted by D3monic

Looks good! Now that they are eating the brine its just a matter of time. If you use a feeding dish they get used to going there for food and it makes introducing new foods alot easyer. I am very happy for you and GL on you spawning...Remember, eggs are clear and if they release with lights off or just actinics you most likely will not be able to see them. With any luck they will spawn for you regularly.

That's what I was using the shot glass for, but I need to find something a better shape. I would be so ecstatic if they spawned!!

Way to go spiny! keep us posted...am very interested in following this thread

Still not totally onto frozen, but getting there. I decided they don't like the taste of selcon very much, so I can't saturate the shrimp with it, or they just spit it out.

I'm having a hard time getting them to eat out of a glass. The live brine shrimp just swim right out of it so the mandarins aren't really interested in going in to get the dead ones. Suggestions???

Also found out I can buy live brine shrimp locally for about a 10th the price of ordering online!

why dont you leave them in the main tank and start eating from live rock and then eat also frozen that passes in front of them. That is what i did with mine.

They run the risk of starving that way, which happens to too many people. It's just safer to have them eating prepared food.