Sad Day: Mandarin/Seahorse Training

[Suzanne Lynn]

A few weeks ago I acquired a pair of male and female mandarin dragonets, which I placed in separate breeders in my 35gal tank. After about four days I was able to get them to eat decapsulated brine shrimp cysts. Unfortunately, I was unsuccessful in training them to eat anything else and before I could try my daughter (who's a year and a half snuck them out of their breeders quietly while I was diligently typing a paper. After doing this she gently tucked them into her doll bed and went back to her usual reign of terror. As terrible as this was, I was unable to stay upset because she's young and probably just thought the fish were chilly and tired.
This leads me to my initial question, Who has been able to successfully train mandarin dragonets to eat pellets and how was this done? Also has anyone been able to train dwarf seahorses to accept frozen shrimp or mysis as I have Dwarves as well and am curious to see if this has been done.

(also if anyone has some idea of where to get mandarins for cheap from a lfs in CO that would be awesome! Ordering them from bluezoo has been yealding too far emaciated fish.)

 

[09bumblebee]

Lest see pics of your tank. Sry back on topic now

 

[ReefCheif]

Ive had success with green and red mandarins as well as Target dragonettes. I use a 10gallon QT tank for them, start with plenty of live brine and pods, begin to slowly add frozens or pellets to the mix. It takes time, but eventually they start to eat frozens. I wait to release them into the DT until I have them eating frozens.

 

[Suzanne Lynn]

Lest see pics of your tank. Sry back on topic now

Which one?

 

[09bumblebee]

Which one?

All of them. Haha

 

[Suzanne Lynn]

This is the 35 gal I was going to put the mandarins in. (I know the corals are fake I'm terrible with plants so I'm afraid to attempt coral.)http://s1274.beta.photobucket.com/user/Suzie_Lynn/media/-1.jpg.html I'm still a newbie on this forum so pics are difficult

 

[Suzanne Lynn]

and my dwarf seahorse tank is actually my avatar

 

[09bumblebee]

Well now is the time to learn and change that!

 

[Suzanne Lynn]

im all ears

 

[09bumblebee]

Why don't you start a thread about your tanks and we will chat about equip and all that good stuff there so we don't get off track on this thread!

 

[Cake_Boss]

Suzanne, those fake coral look really clean. Do you scrub often?

 

[Suzanne Lynn]

Nope , the majority of those are new (tank finished cycling a month ago). I think when they do get dirty with algae I'll purchase a longspine sea urchin to go to town on it that way if my cardinals decide to propagate they'll have the urchin.

 

[Badgervet]

This is the 35 gal I was going to put the mandarins in. (I know the corals are fake I'm terrible with plants so I'm afraid to attempt coral.)

Don't know a thing about mandarins but I live just outside of Elizabeth and if you ever need any easy keeper corals (green mushrooms, green button polyps) i've usually got a few that I'm trying to give away.
Sorry to hear about your fish...sounds like something my 18 month old would do if he could reach the top of one of the nano cubes except instead of tucking them to sleep, he'd feed them to the dog and cats!

 

[Suzanne Lynn]

=O!!!! lol I will for sure have to take you up on that sometime. Do you have any that are not aggressive/stinging?

 

[LittleCrabby101]

I have a good size mandarin and I've trained him to eat prepared food. He is slower then the other fish during feedings so I did an experiment and I placed some food in a jelly jar sunk it to the bottom and the mandarin has figured it out and now eats out of the jelly jar! He is still skinny tho ;( he picks at rocks constantly. I also rotate rocks from my fuge into my main tank for pods and I give him tigger pods once or twice a month.

 

[WatercolorsGuy]

(also if anyone has some idea of where to get mandarins for cheap from a lfs in CO that would be awesome! Ordering them from bluezoo has been yealding too far emaciated fish.)

There are a few vendors here on the forum that get them in. Usually very good pricing as I recall. I believe Nick @Ambrosia Aquatics had some recently as well as was offering to bring in sea horses.
Check out the vendor section on here or maybe one will jump in too.

Sent from my SPH-D710 using Tapatalk 2

 

[WatercolorsGuy]

Oh....and WELCOME to the group!

 

[Suzanne Lynn]

Is he bad skinny or just a little on the thin side? and what does he eat?

 

[Suzanne Lynn]

Yeah actually I was selling a few of my dwarf horses a while back on Craigslist and Nick asked me about them. Unfortunately, I'm not yet able to sell them at a large quantities yet :/ he's looking to get a huge array to breed for his shop!! I'll be selling a few females here soon though as they far outnumber my males and are driving them nuts . I'll have to get down there and have a look because its been a pain to find a male/female pair under thirty a piece that isn't emaciated.

 

[LittleCrabby101]

I got my mandarin from AquaMart for I think $25. He's thin but I think he burns a lot of calories swimming around all the time lol He's always picking at the rocks. He eats cyclopleeze, tigger pods and prepared brine shrimp. I would really like a pair of seahorses!