How to Train a Ruby Red Dragonet to Eat Frozen

[livinlifeinBKK]

I have a 20 gallon tank thats newly set up but since I used natural ocean live rock and have been dosing phyto nightly, is teeming with copepods, amphipods, and other microfauna. Its intended to be a breeding tank but the Greissinger Gobies arent available to order yet and the owner isnt sure when he can order them yet. In the meantime, I wanted to take a shot at keeping my second favorite fish (1 Ruby Red Dragonet). Im well aware that even 1 will quickly deplete the copepod population so I know I need to train him to either eat frozen or live Grindal worms I can culture.
Whats the best method of training them to eat frozen?

 

[Redemptioner]

Pretty easy to train up, start with frozen copepods and live baby brine shrimp. You can then change to frozen baby brine then to large frozen brine over a couple of weeks. They are also smart enough to work out where the food normally is, so try putting a dish into the sand next to a rock (blocked from current) and then turn pumps off and put food in the dish. After a week or so you will find them coming to the dish when they wake up to have a big breakfast feed. I try to fill my feeder for the various dragonets before the lights come on. One they feed from the dish regularly you can start adding micro pellets.

If your tank is teeming with food already it can make it harder to get them over to frozen food (as they often need to be a bit hungry to begin with), in saying that you will be surprised how much live food your tank can produce if you restrict access to about 1/3 of the surface area in the tank from predation. Some examples are using very coarse coral rubble, tiling a bare bottom with tiles with a gap underneath, caging off a section of the tank such as the strip next to the overflow or putting in a 3D printed "pod hotel"

 

[livinlifeinBKK]

Pretty easy to train up, start with frozen copepods and live baby brine shrimp. You can then change to frozen baby brine then to large frozen brine over a couple of weeks. They are also smart enough to work out where the food normally is, so try putting a dish into the sand next to a rock (blocked from current) and then turn pumps off and put food in the dish. After a week or so you will find them coming to the dish when they wake up to have a big breakfast feed. I try to fill my feeder for the various dragonets before the lights come on. One they feed from the dish regularly you can start adding micro pellets.

If your tank is teeming with food already it can make it harder to get them over to frozen food (as they often need to be a bit hungry to begin with), in saying that you will be surprised how much live food your tank can produce if you restrict access to about 1/3 of the surface area in the tank from predation. Some examples are using very coarse coral rubble, tiling a bare bottom with tiles with a gap underneath, caging off a section of the tank such as the strip next to the overflow or putting in a 3D printed "pod hotel"

The tank does have coral rubble covering about a third of it and the live ocean rock is highly pourous and arranged in a way that I doubt he will be able to reach certain areas. The coral rubble on two sides will probably be the most helpful for providing shelter for the pods though. Ill also continue to dose live phyto nightly to encourage population growth.

 

[livinlifeinBKK]

@Redemptioner I like the fact that the rock introduced a variety of tropical copepod species that should reproduce well and offer a variety of sizes while until he learns. I actually got a pretty big tunicate as a hitchhiker on one piece!