Feeding and Mandarin Goby without a fuge

Lets hear your techniques and success stories.

 

I had a 46g with a spotted mandarin. He live for many years and I give the success to 100lbs of very mature LR, and a clump on chaeto stuffed behind the wall. His two tank mates were a clown and an orchid dotty. I could go months without feeding any of them there was so much fauna.

 

you had no sump for pods? just some cheato stuft behind a wall?

 

you can buy Mandarins from ORA they are trained to eat prepared foods, they are slightly more expensive i think a normal mandarin is around 20 bucks and an ORA is around 50 but worth it IMO if you are worried about not being able to feed them enough. If you decide to purchase one that can eat prepared foods you can set up a mandarin diner, there are a bunch of videos on youtube, what one is, is it a glass bottle or something along those lines that you put pellet food in and the entrance is only big enough for the mandarin so they can take there time eating the food without the chance of other fish stealing it. Also if you decide to not go the ORA mandarin option you can set up a copepod farm pretty easily. A user Peredhil has a really good thread on how to set one up and run it. They are pretty simple and dont cost a lot of money to set up.

 

ORA Mandarins grow up on pods. They are not trained to eat prepared food and people have just as much trouble with them. Their stomachs also aren't meant for a once/twice daily feeding so even if mandarins do eat prepared foods, they need to have pods to snack on.

 

I know for a fact that ORA trains mandarins to eat prepared foods, If the mandarins can eat pellets then it is enough protein to last them the day as long as they get enough, or you can set up a diner like i previously mentioned and you wont have to feed them multiple times a day

 

Yup

I've heard alot of people have isues with ORA mandarins as well

 

Well if people are actually having issues when u go to the fish store just ask them to feed it some food and make sure it eats it, any reputable fish store will do that for you before you buy it

 

I always do this

 

Copepod farm? I'm going to have to check this out.... ;D