help feeding mandarin

Hey all! I have a 55g reef tank with a pair of ocel clownfish, scooter blenny, and green mandarin. My clownfish eat like crazy. My blenny will eat frozen food if in its reach or sometimes ill fill a snail shell with it and he'll go to town. My concern is my mandarin. He is so darn slow even the snails will beat him to anything. I tried stocking with copepods a few weeks ago but he still looks thin. If I try and feed with a pipette the blenny beats him to it. Does anyone have tips on how to feed him? I don't want him to starve. He eats frozen food but just takes to long to get to it. I ordered a kit on hatching live brine shrimp and am hoping that will help.

 

You will need to constantly add pods to your system or your mandarin will slowly starve to death.

 

You should probably rehome him. You bave two pod eaters (scooter blenny is a dragonette) in a tank that is probably too small for even one (without constant replenishment of pods as Craig noted).

 

Your other choice is to set up a 10G tank and start raising pods for it. It is not difficult, a small initial investment.

Then you will have to dose the tank every couple days from the 10G

 

I have had luck using cyclopseeze for feeding mandarins. The size seems to be small enough that they tend to go after it and peck the rocks where it lands

 

Are you running a sump? I will restock my sump with a couple thousand pods as needed to feed my mandarin. If you have a decent amount of cheato in the sump, eventually they will sustain themselves and small amounts get up into your display through the return. You can also manually transfer some out of the sump into the main tank. Otherwise, you will have to do the above mentioned separate tank, keep buying pods like crazy, or get rid of the mandarin. Dave is correct, your tank is just too small to sustain a pod population by itself. The two pods eaters will clear it out too quickly.

 

lilyep125

I want to welcome you to GIRS!

the forums are the perfect places for these questions, i struggled with my first mandrin also and as craig (xroads) stated a pod culture will help, also you might look into the pod hotel ( many DYI's on them) by doing as salty has said by manually transfering the hotels 1 in and 1 out of the sump and 1 for next weeksoaking in the sump.


joshua

 

if you were to add a refugium that drains to main tank then the plankton will naturally enter into the system as a food source the possibilities are endless

 

I have been adding pods since I got him but im not sure that is working. Everything is HOB. I think I might just re-home him. Thank you all for the replies

 

....Is anyone interested in a green mandarin? lol

 

I would love one for my 120 gallon with 40 gallon sump (lots of pods), but I am in Marion. /DesktopModules/ActiveForums/themes/_default/emoticons/sad.gif

 

I think pod production is the most overlooked benefit of running an algae scrubber. Probably best to get rid of it until you build a stable pod population though.

 

If you can find them you might try stocking your tank with Isopods (Okeepods), I kept a mandarin for over 2 1/2 years without restocking pods. They multiply like mad. My mandarin was always big and fat. Good luck!!