Ruby Red Dragonet & Mandarin Goby Question

[Kristasmarie2084]

My husband and I just started a salt water tank and all the levels were great with 5 Damsels after a month, so we decided to go buy some more fish. Well we ended up with a Ruby Red Dragonet and a Mandarin Goby without really researching them before hand. We are now researching what they eat and are worried that our tank may not be mature enough to feed them. Any suggestions with supplementing food?

 

[Justiful]

Algaebarn.com -- Order copepods get next day shipping. Get 16oz per 20gallons of water. Go to LFS and buy Chaeto, or maidens hair algae or order it if no other choice. Place it in main display tank still wrapped up in the rubber band ball, maybe loosen it a bit. Get 1 bundle per 30g of water, should be size of softball.

Now place the algae in tank, loosen it a bit but no so much it grows wild. When copepods arrive, wait till night cycle, turn off powerheads and pump. Take the bag and start squeezing the pods into the tank into the chaeto or maidens hair clumps. Wait 1 hour and turn back on power heads and pump.

Order 16oz per 1 weeks for every 30g of tank water. Include the sump. Until you train them to eat non-live food. That is a whole other post and many posts explain training mandarins better than I can, as I follow their advice. For now you need to make sure they live long enough to be trained. Should only take 2-4 weeks to fully train them once you start. But don't be stingy with the pods for first two weeks, they are likely starved from the fish store.

My advice stops them from dying in the first two weeks, between now and then I suggest you research training them to eat frozen food, or decapsulated baby brine.

I also got one from the pet store 3 days ago. My tank had pods already, but I added more to fatten it up. I start training next week after he has had time to fatten up on pods in my tank. I will be using the glass bottle method, since I have a pretty active feeding frenzy tank.

 

[Justiful]

Oh ... and yours might already be trained. The possibility exists.
Try feeding them Decapsulated baby brine shrimp, or frozen mysis. A turkey baster with tank water, mixed with the food makes for a good target feeder. Both are cheaper than pods by far, so if they already trained no point spending a ton of money on pods, or even getting them right away.

 

[melypr1985]

You could ALSO - by that I mean in addition to the above suggestions- start a pod culture. It's easy to do and better than trying to buy pops every week. a little 5 gallon tank, air bubbler and some phytoplankton and your ready to culture your pods! I'm doing this even with a very mature tank (for 7+ years) to support a pair of red mandarins. PS. we also used algae barn for our pods and phyto

 

[vic67]

Buy pods ASAP. I've used algaebarn.com; rumenrumen (seller on eBay) and also myreeftoyours.com

 

[Kristasmarie2084]

Thank you everyone for the help!

 

[Drauka99]

Oh ... and yours might already be trained. The possibility exists.
Try feeding them Decapsulated baby brine shrimp, or frozen mysis. A turkey baster with tank water, mixed with the food makes for a good target feeder. Both are cheaper than pods by far, so if they already trained no point spending a ton of money on pods, or even getting them right away.

I have had good luck with mandarins on getting them to eat out of a shot glass on its side with brine and mysis in it. the Ruby Red I have currently is not interested. I have heard from several people that their Ruby Reds went to prepared food pretty easily. Now that my ruby red is much more filled out it is possible I can get him to try other foods. He is also much more active in the tank and is exploring the sand bed more which makes it easier to use the shot glass.

Depending on their current health I would probably go right to pods for now. Some stores do carry them locally and usually if there is a local reef club you can get some cheato with a few pods in it for free or very little money fast.

Most of the Ruby reds I have seen come in locally are very thin, sunken bellys and the lateral line protruding. It has taken mine a good 4 weeks to get to looking healthy.

Good luck, try the turkey baster and/or the shot glass on its side while you are waiting for pods if you have to order them, you might get lucky. Even then it is my experience that you will still need to have a good pod population in the tank, even with them eating other foods they are still primary pod eaters

 

[E048]

Return them to the fish store you got them from

Most dragonets will be fine in a non mature tank for awhile then all of a sudden get skinny and die

Good luck with these guys.... I read somewhere that one mandarin needs to eat somewhere around 500pods an hour to stay healthy