I'd like to discuss my Mandarin's feeding.

[Mark Novack]

Hi, Mark here. I placed a Mandarin in a 30 gallon lps tank. Its a well matured tank but small. I have live pods and artemia available at the fish stores but it won't touch live. It eats frozen cyclops and artemia. I target feed it twice a day. I see it ingest 10 or 20 artemia per feeding and it actively searches for my feeding pipette.

It only eats from the sand or rock. It will not take floating food, even just millimeters over the sand. It has thickened up in the belly since it arrived and looks healthy.

Do you think I can keep it alive? Feed 3 times per day? What other foods might I try to enrich its diet? Eventually it will go into my 800liter tank but in the small tank I actually get to see it and enjoy it.

Thanks,
Mark

 

[Lasse]

Keep on feeding with cyclops and artemia as staple food. If you want to enrich its diet behavior test with some other frozen food like mysis or black mosquito larvae. I would keep it in the small tank for a while and when you transfer it over to the large - do some daily WC from the large to the small tank for a week or two prior to the move. It will both adapt the mandarin to the microlife of your large tank and give it the same smell as the other fishes. This is important if you want to avoid any bulling behavior from your old fishes IMO

Sincerely Lasse