Description
The Mandarin Feeder Kit: Tools to help feed finicky mandarins.
The green mandarin fish (Synchiropus splendidus) is an unusually beautiful little dragonet. Given its vibrant coloration and graceful movement, it will always be a staple of the marine aquarium hobby. Still, this species does (like most) have some special care requirements. Most of these issues center around foods and feeding methods. This is mainly due to the fact that the species is rather finicky about what it eats. That’s where the Mandarin Feeder Kit comes in.
Some find that it takes some work to provide the fish with enough acceptable food items to sustain its long-term health. Indeed, it is sadly common for mandarins (most often wild-caught specimens) to starve in captivity. For this reason, many hobbyists prefer captive-bred mandarins; these animals tend to fare better as pets in general than wild stock and are comparatively much easier to feed. In fact, captive-bred specimens are much more often successfully trained to accept supplemental prepared diets. Transition to prepared diets usually consists of mixing living and prepared items at the appropriate time and in the right proportions.
What does this Kit do?
This package is specially selected to accomplish three key tasks when tending to a new or starving mandarin fish:
- Getting some food in its gut immediately.
- Seeding the tank with a continuously-producing live food source.
- Introducing a wholesome, palatable, easy-to-use prepared item into its diet.
One thing that few mandarins can’t resist are live brine shrimp (Artemia salina). They are easy for them to capture and ingest, yet they swim in a manner that strongly elicits the fish’s natural feeding response. The jar of NanoBrine included in the package delivers a planktonic blast of live, freshly hatched (i.e. more nutritious) brine shrimp.
Copepods naturally make up the bulk of a mandarin’s diet. They tend to hunt these minute prey throughout most of the daylight hours to get a good fill. That’s why this package includes a jar of 5280 Pods. The three copepod species in this quality live product (Tigriopus californicus, Tisbe biminiensis and Apocyclops panamensis) can seed a lasting and continuously accessible population of nutritious live feed.
Finally, the Can O’ Cyclops included in the package can be used as soon as the animal is on its feet again. Very small amounts may be added during feeding time, with increasing amounts offered as the animal consumes more and more of this proven product. These supplemental feedings serve to keep its belly full as it matures into a larger, more colorful and more fully developed fish.
