New Adition

[black molly3]

Yesterday i decided to add a new adition to my tank as i have not put anything in it for a while. i seen a striped manderin and at 14 pounds how could i resist. my tank has been up for two months which is quite new for a manderin but i figured as he is a baby (about an inch and a half) there should be enough live food on the rocks for now. i asked the man at the lfs for some cheato algea and he gave me a massive clump of it for FREE!!! i bought a net, stuffed the chaeto inside and put it behind some live rock as a secure place for copeods (sp) to survive and repoduce. so far he seems quite well. picking at all the rock and he is far from shy. there hasnt been a time when i have looked at the tank and i havnt seen him. excelent adition to the tank. My stocking is now this. 1 cleaner shrimp, 1 blue yellow tail damsel, a tommatoe clown, 1 common clown, 1 red spot cadinal damsel, 1 striped manderin and a nitrus snail.

well now thats said heres the question. how could i lure him onto frozen foods or live brine shrimp. i feel it would be much more safer getting him onto these foods rather than him relying on an unstable amount of copepods
thankyou.
Black molly3

right this isnt a pledge for spamming but could you do me a favour and check this funny advert out just to get the views up. thanks
http/www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZV8u3eh2mo

let us know what you think

 

[sorgan]

ok now this will be hard if your a newish keeper but you can train them to eat from jars.

take a jar and secure it to a plastic pole of some kind so you can lift in in and out of the water easy.

place pellet food (the stuff that dissolves quick and the stuff that doesnt, i would go for new era pellet and the new D&D stuff or something close)

hopfully in time the smell of the dissolving food will entice the mandy to try the pellet food out, you use a jar so it has time to go a feed as they are not aggressive feeders.
be aware that this is not a sure fix and you are going to have to bolster you pod cultures alot with bought pods.

btw you have 4 damselfish in 1 tank so be aware that you will have trouble at some point

 

[DIVEPHOTO]

Hi .. My tanks been running about 3 months and want a manderin so looking forward to some good tips on your post .. i have 2 yellowtailes damselfish and 2 clowns and 1 boxer shrimp ooh yes and ugly my algea blenny . please keep us posted

 

[lewiss]

I found putting live brine shrimp in nd pumps off - my mand ate them straight away.. Yours should too, then they mistake frozen for live so they eat that. Then I bought live mysis off eBay nd did the same!! Worth a try, it's easier!!

 

[DIVEPHOTO]

Hi Lewiss
what is a nd pump ?
cause this sounds good

 

[lewiss]

Sorry when I say pump, I mean any filters that you run, protein skimmers, general filters, and your powerhead(s). I've found that mandarins are very blind and if there's to much water movement they cant get it quick enough. Having said that if the frozen food doesn't move enough then they won't think it's real. To start off I turned the powerhead on for a few seconds each time when the food began to settle.

I have a spotted mandarin and they take to frozen food more so than the psychedelic mandarin (just bare it in mind) having said this my parents have a tank with a psychedelic in and I've used this method to get him on brine shrimp, but I can't find anyone selling live mysis at the moment to try.. The eBay users hasn't replied to me email I sent last month.. I'll keep you posted if I hear anything, and if you see any for sale let me know!!
Another way I'm going to try.. Recently I found several live large 'mysis' look a like's in my pump (I have a fluval pump and no sump, I'd love a sump but that's to complicated for me! ) because they were alive I wondered what they were.. I haven't put live mysis in for about 8 months so that ruled them out. Now I hadn't cleaned my pump for 2 weeks (normally fo do it every week) so I thought the only live thing I've put in is brine shrimp.. So I might be wrong and anyone correct me if brine shrimp don't grow to this side? But I'm going to attempt to grow the brine shrimp and put them in at a mysis type size and hope for the best.

Having said all of this - please note I am a newbie (only about 10months into the hobby) but my Mandy is 8 months old and appears happy, I also still culture copepods, and add them in on a monthly basis and I also use 'Artemia shelless' which is brine shrimp eggs. You buy it in a pot - read before you use it, the liquid they come in, does not go in the tank!! The reason this is good for Mandarins is it's cheaper than brine shrimp, the quantity of eggs you get is huge, mandarins can eat the egss but no success that I've seen from mine or parents. But they're small so I wouldn't necessarily see (my Emporer cardinal I've had since he was less than a cm and he ate them) and lastly brine shrimp is not nutritious enough to keep a mandarin alive, as is mysis. What helps is that newly hatched brine shrimp less than 2 days old is very nutritious, but still not enough on it's own, you must provide copepods for him to eat, even if you buy them on eBay or online LFS, but it's important to keep him alive!!

Sorry for the essay, hope this helps.. And just lastly, this technique is something I invented myself after researching mandarins a lot, it's not a proved method and only tried twise - would love to know if you have any luck so please let me know but don't get your hopes up!!

Lewis

 

[seffieuk]

Just want to throw in a warning here - wish I could make a siren go off

Mandys must have copepods etc to survive, they will not, long term survive on flake, pellet, mysis without their natural diet of copepods. So as Lewis quite rightly pointed out and unless you have a large tank of approx five feet with 90lbs of live rock, you will need to buy or culture copepods - its easy

Looking forward to seeing your photos

Seffie x