Mandarin and Scooter Dragonets
Feeding
Dragonets, mandarins or scooters, may or may not accept the non-live food, so as any other fish in this situation, it will live or die. Scooters are easier to wean. Improper food may lead to malnutrition.
On Dragonet Links page are links to the original articles, where the terms, like Mandarin Diner originated, what are pods, where to order the live pods and how to set their culture at home.
Different Approaches
There are different approaches to the feeding mandarins:
1. The best seems to be keeping one dragonet in very big tank, 180+ gal, filled by live rocks, possibly with macrolagae, swarming with the pods, with no other competition for food, like another dragonet or wrasses.
2. The next is buying the live pods (the common part of the words copepods, amphypods, isopods) or growing own pods culture. The last requires quite an effort, space and time.
3. Setting the Mandarin Diner.
What I tried: placing defrozen mysis shrimp, brine shrimp and Marine Cousine, the smallest marine pellets, like Hikari "S", Tetra, Nitrafin, and Cyclop-eeze granules, in the tank, either:
- on the bottom (photos on hex),
- in the olive jar or a short wide glass (Mandarin Diner), to keep it from being dispersed by flow or eaten by a bigger fish, and keeping it in the tank all day long,
- onto the zoantid or other small polyps colony (don't have a link to the source, sorry).
You may try the add the dried or frozen Cyclop eeze, frozen cyclops and baby brine.
Brands: I offered my fish the different brands of mysis: Hikari, Big Al's, Sally's San Fransico Bay and Kordon. Kordon is the smallest. Later the brand didn't matter, sometimes mandarin ate even the finely cut frozen Prime Reef (only as addition to the other food).
Always offer a variety of food to choose from, and try to support this by live pods and fresh rocks with a new growth from refugium.
4. Supplemental culturing pods in the tank - making a safe place for pods to reproduce:
- the pod pile (LR rubble mount, with or without covering by strawberry plastic basket)
- the false wall with the rubble live rock attached (tried, can't say how it worked - the pods are small and the wall is too far in the tank).
- mysids hide nicely between short corals, yellow polyps, for example.
Images of the copepods, amphypods, isopods are here.
For the period of weaning some are using:
- the fish roe (didn't work for my fish),
- the turkey baster or pipette to make the dead mysis look alive for a few seconds,
- add the defozen mysis to the live pods.
What worked for me:
Just having the frozen mysis all the time in the tank available (changed daily, and removed at night) worked for me. Used turkey baster too, but this didn't impress fish. Active scooters started to eat this pretty fast, in a couple of days, other fish and hermits too, mandarins were the last - on the 8th day (Aug 19 - Aug 27, 2006).
The problem with Mandarin Diner is in having the easily accessible place for removing it, with flow away, so the food stays in the jar. The second problem is with troublemakers crew: the hermit crabs were blocking access in the jar for other fish and were eating the most of the food, instead of cleaning the tank. Which is understandable: no one wants to be a debris collector, if the feast table is ready every day.
If the starter culture of live pods is not available in your area:
What worked for me: the mysids, amphypods, isopods and the smallest copepods on the glass just appeared several times in different tanks, likely hithhikers on the live rock.
If there are no predators, or the tank has protected area, like a piece of LR with algae or a polyps, where the scooter just don't fit, sooner or later (2 months max) this place becomes inhabited by pods. Especially if the place is not disturbed by syphoning during the tank cleaning. You can make such place near the glass to see, how it's going.
I happen to have 5g hexagonal tank with shallow sand bed, some soft corals, live rock and different macroalgae, that has only heater and small pump for a water movement, near the window. No feeding, no cleaning, some small water changes very rarely, practically abandoned for the months - the pods are swarming there. Only keep alkalinity in check. If the pods are removed for a feeding dragonets, additional feeding may be necessary.
You also may see the smallest (less than 1mm or 1/32") copepods on the glass - in the tank with heavy feeding by frozen food and rarely cleaned glass, lighted and not.
And the big gammarus-like amphypods, mostly in the jungle of chaetomorpha (green thread-like algae, common in refugiums for nutrients export. You can obtain chaeto through classifieds, cheap, or for free from any reefer you are know.
Illustrations for a pods are here.
Next page: Where to find pods