Mandarin goby feeding

aceer15 · Nov 13, 2013

I was very hesitant to pick one of these guys up. Only have a 40 breeder and know I can't sustain a pod population big enough with the small amount of live rock I have.

After lots of reading I decided to go ahead and grab one. Within a few days he had eaten all the pods in my tank. I decided to wait for the pods to be finished before I started training him. After no food for a few days I started putting mysis and brine shrimp in a low flow area near him with my turkey baster while the rest of my fish went to town on the otherwise of the tank. I did this for a few days until I saw him slowly start taking the shrimp. So I had him eating shrimp but he still cannot compete with the other fish for food. After a week of this I added a small glass jar to the tank and started adding the shrimp in there. It took him a few days of getting hungry to be curious enough to go to the jar. Now he sits in front of the jar every morning like a dog waiting to be fed.

Angry Turtle · Nov 13, 2013

cool, how long have you had it eating this way?

Dalmatia · Nov 13, 2013

My " Psychedelic " mandarin loves bloodworms which I think is crazy

aceer15 · Nov 13, 2013

Angry Turtle said:
cool, how long have you had it eating this way?

He's been eating shrimp for about a month and out of the jar around 2-3 weeks

Dalmatia · Nov 13, 2013

aceer15 said:
He's been eating shrimp for about a month and out of the jar around 2-3 weeks

What mandarin do you have?

seancc317 · Nov 13, 2013

Any chance of a of pic and/or video?

tuna_bullet · Nov 13, 2013

sweet way to train them i have four pairs in my system they all do great...i am lucky enough to have a insane pod population...but they all pick at the mysis when i feed...one pair is in the process of mating they do the dance every night and the female looks like she ate two marbles.......hopefully i can gather her eggs one of these nights....

aceer15 · Nov 13, 2013

tuna_bullet said:
sweet way to train them i have four pairs in my system they all do great...i am lucky enough to have a insane pod population...but they all pick at the mysis when i feed...one pair is in the process of mating they do the dance every night and the female looks like she ate two marbles.......hopefully i can gather her eggs one of these nights....

That would be awesome if you can get raise the fry, get a thread goin about them if you do!

aceer15 · Nov 13, 2013

seancc317 said:
Any chance of a of pic and/or video?

I'll get a pic and possible video up tomorrow when I feed again! Excuse the iPhone quality

aceer15 · Nov 13, 2013

Dalmatia said:
What mandarin do you have?

He's a dragonnet, gorgeous fish

Igarc009 · Nov 13, 2013

I feed mine prawn eggs, got them from ebay. She goobbles them up! Spends the rest of the day on the sand bed looking for more haha

Ozzy · Nov 13, 2013

I was lucky with mine lol. I bough it already eating formula 1 pellets. He also eats frozen mysis/brine shrimp. Beautiful fish for sure. Glad you where able to get him eating! Sometimes that is a task from what I have heard.

aceer15 · Nov 14, 2013

That's what I've heard too, guess we got lucky!

zoalover · Nov 14, 2013

these guys are a hit or miss in regards to eating frozen foods etc. I had ones that didn't really take much effort to train to eat frozen food and others that simply refuse to eat at all no matter what.