Ruby Red Dragonet Not Eating?

[SoloChromis]

I plan on adding a pair of these guys once my 120g is rebooted, but have had crap lucking finding a single one that will even take live brine in my LFS. In your experience, what is the best food/trick to get a dragonet (more specifically a scooter dragonet) to eat? Personally, I won't put a fish in my tank unless it is eating prepared foods, especially considering all the other competing pod munchers I have (dottyback, wrasses etc.). Thanks guys :spin1:

[snorvich]

IMO if you have a lot of copepod competitors in this sized tank, I doubt that you can sustain a pair long term.

[SoloChromis]

IMO if you have a lot of copepod competitors in this sized tank, I doubt that you can sustain a pair long term.

Not even with frequent feedings throughout the day?

[Fragman4]

Only a limited amount of people are sucessful getting dragonets to eat prepared foods. Even ORA stopped breeding them due to the diffuculty in adjusting them to a caprive bred diet. Yes it is possible but i would make sure you have a good pod population just in case.

[nodak]

I must be lucky . I have 2 ruby reds that will eat rotifers. This is the only frozen they will eat. I have had these 2 for about a year nice and fat. It also helps the tank is loaded with pods.I also have a green and spotted in two different tanks these guys have never touched frozen foods.

[snorvich]

Not even with frequent feedings throughout the day?

No. Your wife (or significant other) serves steak at night for dinner. Unfortunately, s(he) invites three hungry wolves. The steak is thrown into the back yard for you and your "dinner guests". How much steak are you going to get?

[Reef Frog]

These fish have identical needs to the Mandarin Dragonettes IME: Pod eaters with only a small percentage taking prepared foods.

In a thread here last year some reported luck with Nutramar Ova. I tried fish eggs & RN krill with the pumps off & was never sure if it ate any. They only suck the substrate & are oblivious to live swimming foods IME. Mine looked fine for several months with no visable weight change from when purchased. It disappeared & never returned from hiding after a water change & coralline scraping session.

I did extensive research, even speaking to the very helpful & cordial importers & wholesalers. I can't be 100% certain, but these fish may be "on the line"' between tropical & sub tropical. Our 80F tsnks MAY be too warm. If I ever tried again I might consider shooting for the 73F range in a purpose built tank, which isn't going to happen any time soon.

My 4 yo tank was stable & thriving. Mixed 65g LPS/SPS reef, 1" 'sandbed, Pacific LR, GFO tank, no refugium with NO pod eating competition. Fish never pecked @ sand or rock RRD had the place to himself. I saw pods but not the swarms some people report, but for me picking them out visually on the sand bed is like seeing fly poo in pepper. So I was never sure if I had enough. Maybe the RRD died from starvation, it never acclimated fully, stress I did not see (doubtful), temperature or what. I did see pods on the glass, after dipping a coral frag etc so I know i had them. Since the RRD is 1/2 to 1/3 the size & body mass of a Mandarin, I figured my tank was a good bet for success. Wrong. But I never really knew if my pod population was up to snuff and that's my best guess for the failure.

Anyhow this should not be considered an easy to keep fish. There's very little information out there on this fish as it hasn't been common in the hobby for long. It's a great little fish, probably one of the best looking and most interesting nano sized fish available IMO so I hope more is learned about them.

[snorvich]

I did extensive research, even speaking to the very helpful & cordial importers & wholesalers. I can't be 100% certain, but these fish may be "on the line"' between tropical & sub tropical. Our 80F tsnks MAY be too warm. If I ever tried again I might consider shooting for the 73F range in a purpose built tank, which isn't going to happen any time soon.



Very interesting. Have you gotten any more information on this?

[Reef Frog]

Steve:

Yes. I have some worthwhile email correspondence on this. I believe I can dig it out of my cloud email archive. I did ask for permission to post some quotes & got an OK on the phone, but never posted as the thread went dead and I forgot about it. Let's see if I can dig this out along with some of the little info I gleaned from the web.

DETAILS:
My questions were all about the temperature concerns. My conversations with the wholesale director was great and I appreciate him helping a hobbyist. A recognized industry name - They held & conditioned the fish before shipping to retail.

I had suspicions that this was a deeper water fish and or was endemic to the sub tropical seas of Southern Japan/Okinawa where temperatures were lower than common temps in reef aquaria. My curiosity was initially piqued by a comment in an RC thread. I was thinking maybe its temperature needs were similar to a Catalonia Goby, another fish I woukd keep it I could.

I was not able to come to a firm conclusion. The problem? There was no direct contact between the collector on up through the supply chain to the U.S. wholesaler. Collection location was fuzzy to say the least. Depth & temperature were unknown. So I didn't get an informed answer. I figured it could have been collected E/NE of the Philippines. Maybe the right answer is common knowledge at the industry level by now - I don't know. BTW I had a 79F-80F temp stable tank. Short term max temp of 81 could be reached before the chiller kicked in on infreqent occasions. Not saying temp killed my RRD, it was probably food but I never did resolve the temp question. As you can see I really like this fish and did everything I could to put the odds in my favor, but alas...it didn't work out.

With a 40G breeder w refugium at 68-72F with pods-a-plenty I would try again.

I am curious about any long(er) term reports of RRD keeping success at reef temperatures?

[snorvich]

Thanks. There are some other fish (catalina goby, BSJ) that do best at cooler temperatures. If you get more information, please pass it along.

[SoloChromis]

Thanks. There are some other fish (catalina goby, BSJ) that do best at cooler temperatures. If you get more information, please pass it along.

BSJ = Blue Spot Jawfish? I always wondered about those guys, I feel like I've heard of very few people reporting success with them

[snorvich]

BSJ = Blue Spot Jawfish? I always wondered about those guys, I feel like I've heard of very few people reporting success with them

Correct. Collected in the Sea of Cortez where temperatures are lower than where most aquarists keep their aquaria.

[L8 2 RISE]

I too am very interested in hearing more about the temperatures at which these fish are collected.

I have mine in my 57 gallon reef tank. I have had the male for slightly over a year and finally managed to pick up a healthy female from Divers Den a week ago. The females are for some reason much harder to find and are almost always near death when I find them so I immediately jumped on the one from a reputable source like Divers Den. I am not sure what they did with her there, but she came in fatter than any Ruby I've ever seen at a retail store.

Within 72 hours I witnessed them mating for the first time, and they have every night since:
https://vimeo.com/115890389

I am absolutely fascinated with this genus of fish and have spent a lot of time on them/researching them. I have now tried 5 of these fish total. I'll try to go over a little of what I've learned.

These fish often come in mis-labeled. True Ruby's aren't truly classified yet in that they may be a new species, or maybe they are just a variant of Morrisoni, Moyeri, Tudorjensi, etc. The best way to tell true rubies is the eye spots found directly above their pectoral fins:
http://s59.photobucket.com/user/armagedon48/media/RubyRedDragonts-2_zpsdb4c75dd.jpg.html
The first fish I bought as a "Ruby Red Dragonet" turned out to be a Moyeri, which can look very similar but without the eyespot:
http://liquidlifephotography.com/photos/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/2012_26_31.jpg
I later found that they also act very differently (for a different post).

I then bought a true pair of Ruby's from an LFS, they were pretty skinny so I decided to risk it and put them straight in the display tank. As can be expected disease broke out, they eventually died along with my moyeri, and a couple other fish. Several weeks later I bought a male who looked pretty healthy at the time. He has since at least doubled in size and is the one still in my tank (one year later). He grew to this size eating only pods already in the tank. About 6 months ago he did start to eat frozen food. He gets excited when the tank is fed, and will eat food that drifts past him, however he will not actively search for or compete for the food.

I have not noticed anything to do with temperature as was previously discussed and my tank typically runs anywhere from 77-82 depending on the season. Do not expect this fish to eat prepared food. Even if you eventually get them to eat it, it will be near to impossible to sustain them on just that because they need to constantly pick. If you hope to keep them on just prepared food, I believe they would need on the order of 12-15 feedings per day, with the food targeted at them/drifting past them. The hardest part with these fish is finding an individual that is healthy enough to make it through whatever kind of quarantine you have with enough energy to start hunting and regaining weight. The pre-requisite is of course that you have a mature tank with plenty of pods/life.

Now for determining if it is healthy enough to bring home. Do the obvious checks, then make sure the fish is actively swimming around the tank/hunting. Try to look at the fish from underneath- a collection cup is ideal. When they get skinny it will show most from underneath- on either side of the belly two "ridges" will appear tracing something of a triangle of the two sides of the fish. If you can see those clearly defined, I do not suggest taking the fish home. If the belly is flat or plump, is hunting, and is showing good signs in general, go for it! Like I said, I've taken five of these fish home, however I've seen at least a dozen that I deemed too sickly to bring home and all that I followed up on had died. Quarantine is extremely hard on these fish, so for my most recent addition (the female), I simply acclimated, did a 7 hour prazi bath, followed by a 10 minute FW dip. No parasites were visible after each of these so I then added her to the tank. This is risky as it does not treat for common diseases such as crypto, but given the nature of those diseases, I decided that this was the best solution for ME. I have also done this with other touchy fish.

To answer your initial post (finally), I have never seen these fish go for live brine. Not sure why. I've tried it, but never really gotten any reaction. The "test" I suggest doing is detailed above. In a 120 gallon tank that IS MATURE, I think you would have plenty of pods for these guys even with a couple other pod munchers. They don't seem to eat A LOT, but they do seem to eat constantly. Like I said, I have my pair in a 57 with minimal LR and other pod munchers and they do very well and are FAT (well the male is, I think it's too soon to speak for the female but so far so good- especially given the mating dances!)

[Reef Frog]

Great information, thanks. It's good to know someone is keeping them successfly at normal reef temperatures. Your description of how to evaluate "fat" vs "too skinny"'is very helpful.

[Code4]

I love mine. He eats baby brine shrimp and pods. I use Paul B's feeder. And once the little guy learned there was food to be had he uses it daily.

Shelley

[Halo_003]

I have a Red Scooter Dragonet, very similar to a Ruby Red. I had him for a week before I had any luck training him. He never even looked twice at frozen until I ground up bloodworms to the point they were almost liquid and squirted it in a shotglass. He went nuts immediately and flew over to the jar and went after the tiny bits. I never had to actually train him, after that he has always taken frozen foods. YMMV, but it worked almost instantly for me. (Note: He wasn't taking frozen at the store)