Mandarin goby

So I know these guys can be finicky eaters but does anyone know any tricks into training them to eat prepared foods? I got him yesterday and also a bottle of arcti pods and he appears to have ate some but it was a pain in the butt to feed cause once I got near him he fled.

 

how mature is your tank ? i would only suggest this fish for mature tanks, with an est. pod populous most shops feed them brine which is a bad idea, as i dnt think they get much nutrition from them. and to answer your question i really dnt have any idea how to do what ur asking.
i tried one and killed it due to not being able to provide for it (tank wasnt old enough). I would focus on seeding your tank with pods, and rem turn off all filtration when you and them and id wait like 30 mins b4 i turned it all back on

 

+1 on that advice, and that is for worst case scenario, what other foods have you tried feeding the mandarin, i had one that would eat mysis readily just need to let the fish see the food and take its time, mine would just stare at the shrimp for a bit before eating so just be patient.

 

My tanks only been up for about a month. It's a 40 with 42lbs of LR. I knew they would be picky feeders but it wasn't until after I got it that I realized I shouldve waited for my tank to heavily populate with copepods. I'm gonna go out today and try and fine live pods. I hope my rookie mistake doesn't kill this beautiful creature.

 

well if you can get him on live food like brine then the switch over to frozen isn't bad. I have made the switch to my mandarin eating anything i put in the tank. The key is that he has to be eating something other then pods and make the change. First day i got mine after seeing him eat frozen i mixed frozen and pelets up and fed my tank. He took one piece then 2 days later i lay pellet for my cleaning crew i saw him come out and stalk a piece ate 2 or 3 then fed frozen blood/mysis/brine and he loves that. now 2 months later "fatty" eats everything. But i will warn they either need to be few often or have a pod population to supplement him cause hes eating constantly

 

The person I bought my mandarin from trained it by feeding brine, then feeding brine and pellets. It eventually got the hint that the pellets were food too.

 

right on its pretty much what i did

 

Thanks I'll try this out. Do you remember how long it took the fish to catch on? I just got my guy yesterday I'm still not absolutely sure if he ate what I fed him it appeared he had but was hiding so it was hard to tell.

 

I have no idea, I wasn't the one who did the training. I think she said it was a couple weeks.

 

I just bough my first one about a month ago. I have not fed it anything and it seems to be doing good. Before i bought him though my tank was up and runnig for a year and i seeded the Tank. I got a green target mandrin.