Mandarin fish eating prepared food!!!

[dgasmd]

I guess I got lucky on this one or like my grandpa used to say:

Even a monkey falls off a tree once in a while!!

 

As some of you know, I bought a mandarin fish a few weeks ago and it was beaten pretty badly by the 6-line wrasse. After about 2 days, the wrasse mostly ignored him, but would harrass him a bit when coming out of the rock work. After about 10 days, he ignored him completly.

 

The mandarin had been grazing along during the day. I think he thinks the tank is only half of what it is because he only hangs out in the front half of it. It never goes inside the rock work and grazes mostly on the ope areas. He looks a tiny bit smaller around the waist than when I fisrt got him though.

 

2 days ago I noticed as I fed the tank with a home made food that a big chunk that got on the sand was caught behind my favia coral. The mandarin was coming around from behind it and stopped to stare at it. It then took a bite of the chunk. I thought he was just exploring and went about my bussiness. Today I was feeding the same food and some chunks felt to the sand while the fish were eating. The mandarin came out towards it and started to take bites off it. He must have eaten half of the bigger chunk, which for the fish size, was huge.

 

I hope this is more than a fluke. I truely hope this fish continues to eat the prepared food since I think in the long run he will do much better given the variety of things I put in it.

 

I know this is pretty unusual to find these fish eating anything other than pods, espeically since they will starve to death in their absence. Anybody has had similar experiences in the past???

 

Alberto

[Coral Hind]

I have had two of them and they both loved frozen brine shrimp.  If he doesn't take the homemade stuff give the brine shrimp a try.

 

 I added a checkered goby a month ago and my 6-line did the same thing.  After three days the fin nipping stop.  He also loves the brine.

[Guest Peabody]

Awesome!  My Mandarin seems to be doing fine and eats brine, but would love to get him to eat more.  What kind of food is he eating?  (What's in it?)

Thanks!

Jeff

[dgasmd]

I had tried the mysid and brine shrimp before without success, although maybe I didn't try hard enough.

 

I make my own mix of what I feel like adding and what I happen to find the day I was in the mood to make it. Pretty scientific, ah? This last batch I mixed the following:

-1 fish fillet (halibut)

- 8 or 10 large shrimp

-oysters

-clam juice

-fresh mussels

-3 types of flake food

-pellet food

-some sheets of sea weed

-frozen mysid shrimp

-frozen squid

-frozen brine shrimp

-some drops of multivitamin

-a few scoops of freeze dry phytoplankton

-garlic juice

 

They can't get enough of it. I made about 7 large ziplock bags. This is the second time I make it and I think this one is much better than the first time. I highly recommend you try it.