curious what would an "advanced reefer" do different than a novice reefer to get a mandarin eating frozen apart from waggle some food infront of its face and hope it eats? enlighten this novice reefer
I don't consider myself an 'advanced reefer' but I've trained three wild caught mandarins to eat frozen, and the basic method was this:
Normal acclimation/dips then add to a mesh breeder box in the tank.
Feed twice a day with what I feed the tank (cube of frozen, misc particulate food, a few pellets) and then half a cube or so of something frozen.
Keep them in the box until you can feed them the frozen and they will start eating it within about 5 minutes, ideally on at least two different foods.
It's worth cleaning up residual uneaten food before your next feeding (after at least a few hours of letting it be)
As a backup, have some pods on hand to add to the mix to entice them to eat whatever is around can help, and having a place where you can give it away in short notice to someone with enough pods to have it recover if the training fails (it didn't for me, luckily). It also helps to have a camera to observe, since they startle easy and you don't want your watching to see if they eat be too intrusive.
All of mine took around 2 weeks to meet the criteria that they will eat frozen very soon after it was fed, and this qualification is essential as they likely can't chase down food being blown around by pumps. At first they are scared of you/the feedings, sometimes they look like they're trying to get out of the box. Then eventually they start trying to slurp up pods around the box. At some point in this random feeding behavior, they'll eat some of the prepared food, then you just need to wait for them to recognize which bits are good to eat fast enough to eat when it's offered.
Once they're eating prepared, feed them daily with the same kinds of frozen food included in the mix. Feed with the pumps off or with minimal circulation, and especially until they track down the food reliably, try to offer some near where they like to stay or like to hide when spooked. Eventually they will not be afraid of the baster or whatever you use to feed them and will hunt all over the tank, but initially they'll have some trouble recognizing the food and won't want to be coming out to 'hunt' when you're at the tank, so offering it directly to where they like to be helps.
And for what it's worth, mine definitely prefer larger meaty foods. Mysis and bloodworms are high on the list (and particularly long bloodworms often take several attempts to swallow it until they keep it in their mouth), but one of the first things one ate was the head of a krill that was obviously too big for its mouth, so it sat there in the basket for a couple of minutes looking uncomfortable and occasionally thrashing until it could swallow it properly.... didn't have any ill effect in the long run. Mine have almost entirely ignored PE Calanus and frozen capelin roe - one which is almost exactly what they'd eat normally, and one which is often advertised for finicky eaters with a picture of a mandarin on the front of the package. I think they do eat some when prowling around the tank, but when offered it from the baster directly, they turn away and start hunting around the tank again.
