BIOTA Mandarin Troubles

JayFish4004 · Jun 14, 2022

jrill said:
My Biota mandarin is about year old and doing great. Eats pellets and frozen like a champ. Even comes to the surface to grab pellets when the auto feeder comes on. great little fish.

Second this - I have a pair of Biota mandarins that are thriving in my 20 gallon. They eat mysis from the water column and TDO C1 pellets. I also put a bottle of 5280 pods from AlgaeBarn in every 4 weeks. TDO pellets are by far the best way to get them eating other types of food - you also can’t have aggressive fish in your tank as they will not deal with that type of stress well.

I’m phasing out frozen baby brine - it has done a number on my nitrates as most end up getting caught in filter sponges. If I were you I’d work on getting TDO pellets going long term - I dont think baby brine alone is going to be nutritious enough, but glad it’s eating for ya either way!

FishBeauty · Aug 13, 2024

DaJMasta said:
You put him in the box, then you feed him the food you know he's eaten before and what you want to feed him going forward. Having some pods you can add to the box could potentially be helpful, but the point is that you want him to be trying the new stuff. He will start hunting around as normal when settled in the box even when there aren't pods, and if there's food in there, he will inevitably eat some, even if accidentally, and that's what the method relies on.

Keep an eye on him to see if he gets thinner, feed twice a day and remove old food before the next feeding, but at least in my experience no other food was necessary than the stuff you were trying to get him to eat - they will accidentally eat a bit, get the nutrition, and eventually realize that it was food all along.

Since yours has probably been eating well for a while, it taking a few days to recognize the new stuff likely won't be an issue. While mandarins eat continuously, it's not because they have a super fast metabolism, it's because their normal prey are so small.

Do you just leave him in the box for a few days/weeks until he’s eating or do you just catch and release for each feeding?

DaJMasta · Aug 14, 2024

FishBeauty said:
Do you just leave him in the box for a few days/weeks until he’s eating or do you just catch and release for each feeding?

Leave them in, they will pick at things sort of all day, so removing it shortly after dramatically reduces the chances it will eat something (though you do want to remove old food ~daily to make sure what's there isn't rotten.)

In my experience, one of the first foods they go for of what I'm offering is frozen blood worms, then usually mysis shrimp, then other things. I think being whole, recognizable organism shapes helps them figure it out, and especially with smaller dragonets, use smaller frozen foods (Hikari over PE, for example, since PE mysis are like 2x as long.) They will be able to eat larger foods than you expect from the size of their mouth, but there is a limit.