Green Mandarin (goby)

Will a green mandarin eat rods food? If you have had success with this please speak up.

 

will they? yes, or maybe, but maybe not... my 'red' madarin doesn't take prepared foods and doesn't seem to be interested in it at all... fortunately I have an ample supply of pods.

 

Also, check out this thread covers your question pretty well:

http://www.3reef.com/forums/tropical-fish/mandarin-fish-biocube-84880.html

 

it all depends on the fish...but i hate the idea of feeding mandarins prepared food anyways. Mandarin are like hummingbirds...they need to be eating all the time. One feeding a day or every other day or whatever just won't cover it, and even if they're eating prepared they still won't get what they need.

The bottom line is mandarin need enough pods to eat, which require a larger tank with enough LR, or you breeding your own pods. Otherwise he'll slowly starve to death from either lack of food, or malnutrition. If you can't supply pods for a mandarin, it doesn't deserve to be in the tank. Mandarin dragonets are the kind of fish that should have their full needs met (pods and/or lots of LR in a 90+ gallon tank) or they need to stay in the wild.

 

ditto to this. i've been told/read that their digestive systems are close to that of seahorses. they can be weaned to eat frozen but their systems are built for many small meals rather than one meal a day. as jwin said, malnutrition will become an issue if they can't process what they need to out of the one meal. ALTHOUGH, ORA will soon be selling tank bred mandarin dragonets which eat frozen, so maybe i don't know what i'm talking about....