Mandarin goby

not saying yours is in bad shape but it can take months for the fish to slowly waste away if they are not eating perpared foods or lack of live.

 

The answer is to add them to an established tank. They eat pods and scavenger around your live rock for foods. They have no interest in prepared foods.

 

FALSE!!

some will eat prepared foods and i am sure many others here have witnessed

 

They're "persuaded" into eating something else.

 

what does that even mean? if they are eating, they are eating and not starving

 

I added some to a 3 month old tank (yes a mistake)and they nearly wiped out the thriving pod population then started wasting away.

When I put my green spotted puffer into the 46 bowfront he was having a hard time getting to the food or finding it before it hit the deck then he couldn't find it (the chopped seafood + prepared food mix I make) so I soaked some blood worms (his favorite) in garlic and added it to the tank and my mandarins came and took them from the water column too, not even from the rockwork & macro (you know as in getting stuck there) ever since they'll eat most frozen food I put in and are fat and happy. I add in Selcon to the food too.

Oh and the fatty GSP will now chases down his food and pick it off the rock when it gets blown there...before he was rather lazy and prefered to be hand fed, plus the tank he was in was very low flow.

 

Well I just hope this guy catches on soon. He's a very fascinating fish I would hate for him to meet his end in my tank.

 

And one more question are these little micrscopic white specs on my glass copepods?

 

No, they're just taught to eat prepared food. They don't recognize it as food as easily as some other species. Call them "slow".

 

+1, I did the same thing however when I realized Garlic is not just magical on my food it was too late my Mandarin was beyond saving.

He was also originally put into a 2 year old 40 gallon reef with a giant pod population, and he ate them ALL in about a month.