Dragonet not eating :(
 

Hello All,

I've had a scooter blenny (dragonet) for roughly 2 weeks now. I dosed my 60 gallon with pods & phyto for 2 weeks before getting him. I never once, however, saw him pecking the rocks. In fact, he wouldn't even go onto the 70lbs of mixed rock I have & only stayed on the sand. He would only eat live brine shrimp & would even rush another fish to grab one. This was fine with me since I culture them for my bumblebee gobies anyway. Well, my LFS said brines were like potato chips for fish, so I started high quality flakes with dried brine in the morning & a frozen cube at night (I rotate a marine mix cube with a mysis cube). He'd been hiding all yesterday & when I saw him today, he is SUPER skinny. I dumped a 20oz portion of pods in, a TON of live brine, & a frozen mixed cube in & he won't eat at all. Is there any hope for Scooter?

Sorry, just started the new regiment a week ago. Still supplement live brine twice per week

Well, he died. He died almost violently as well. No sideways swimming or slow breathing, just BAM, upside down & dead. :( My son is DEVASTATED. Any tips for the next one I get? Besides copepods?

sorry to hear.. you need to treat it like a dragonet. they require pods. You can design a show refugium, attach it to your display, and put the scooter in there. fill it with rock rubbles and macro algae

Sorry to hear

scooters eat these tiny pods that are almost impossible to see. You should be able to see moving white dots (pods) when you flash a light at the glass couple hours after lights out.

my pair would peck on pods every few seconds. they go from sand to rock to wall.. everywhere

I was under the impression that live baby brine shrimp actually were pretty nutritious. But I would let the pod population get back up and make sure it stays consistent before trying another one

If you're supplementing live brine, how would the scooter blenny get the shrimp? Brine shrimp are more planktonic than benthic...maybe look into PaulB's baby brine feeder?

What other fish are in the tank? Also, dragonets tend to not eat flake. Fish/prawn roe is appealing for them, and if you can get them to eat mysis, that's very wonderful. Very rarely, you can get them to eat pellets.

OP, so sorry about your little guy! Pod eaters can be really tricky to support. :(

m0nkie, I just added a 30g display fuge a couple of weeks ago and it's already swarming with enormous pods (as is my sump fuge and overflow). I was thinking about putting a ruby red in there since the mandy in the display was already super fat without the new tank. Think it would work?

I do believe they are. Its once they lose their yolk sacks and start maturing they become less nutritionally valuable to the point of almost nothing.

I think it's doable. My ruby pair started eating fish roe so i can supplement them. It is very easy to train them to eat prepared food (easy compared to mandarins).

I would make sure the fuge is mature enough and no more pod eating fish.. (wrasse, filefish etc)

M0nkie where are you getting your roe from?

Ocean nutrition fresh roe or nutramar ova.. i have some nutramar ova from last yr. They are hard to find now so i used ocean nutrition more.. be careful as they as super concentrated. A few drops at most

You can wean them off of live pods in QT. I used live tiger pods, fish roe and chopped mysis. Lot of water change. Lot of feeding.. i still dont see mine eat mysis but they swim after fish roe.

Edited with comments below

Hello all! Sorry for my late response. I had a bad relapse from surgery. Thank you so much for the replies & condolences. My son is still upset, but I told him that we needed to wait awhile till we got another one since we have a mandarin & we don't want him to get sick as well. The mandarin goby is doing great. After dosing the tank in the beginning, before Scooter died, I started supplementing with feeder pods (no reproducing), 16 oz portion, I buy from the lps every week (sometimes every few days), then I throw a bag of tisbe pods in every week as well. I dose with phyto every other day (5mL).

Right now my fish stock stands, & will stay except the addition of another scooter, at 3 cardinal fish, 2 TINY baby O. Clowns, 1 royal gramma, 1 watchman goby with a pistol shrimp, 3 peppermint shrimp, 1 banded coral shrimp, red linckia sea star, & 5 green chromis, along with some cleaner snails that are tiny & I cannot remember what the heck they are. Everything else in the tank is great, besides the loss of a flame scallop which shot my nitrates up. But that was after losing Scooter. Even the sea star seems happy!

I have an Aquafuge 2 I need to put on, but have been stalled due to some orders taking forever to arrive. I'm also going to start a separate 5g for amphipods & a separate 10g for copepods. I figured I could just scoop out the pods with a cup & add them weekly to the dt & fuge to supplement since the Aquafuges are not that big. I live in an apartment & cannot risk a sump, plus the money aspect.

I've switched the brine shrimp to my feeding routine to every 3rd day now to make sure everyone is happy. I could be wrong, but it looks like my mandarin is going after frozen mysis.

Oh & I have ordered some live food that contains some sort of roe as well. Cannot remember which off the top of my head, but I'll order some of the roe that was suggested here too. My biggest problem is over feeding & spoiling. I better add a carbon reactor. Ugh

Oh & as for the brine, Scooter was fairly large. He would just go after the brine. He would chase down the chromis & steal the brine they were after. If he was being lazy, he would just lie there & wait for one to pass, then snatch it. He was like a little pitbull! He would puff his cheeks out & go full force after them! It was really comical!

Where do you find your nutramar ova? I can't seem to find any on Amazon or eBay.

I am starting 2 display fuges this weekend, but can't attach it to the display. Do you think cupping out the water & pouring into the display would be enough? I'm also adding an Aquafuge 2 HOB fuge, but that isn't enough IMO. Should I put a couple of small, easily moved, live rocks in the display fuges & transport the pods that way?

sadly right now, you don't. it's been out of production for mysterious reasons for a while now. i've been hoarding 2 100g flat packs in my freezer for like two years now, just dolling out small amounts as needed.

there are other kinds of roe you can find frozen that are worth a try.

i also can't stress enough how awesome live white worms are. they have a very good nutritional profile, and i have to meet a fish that doesn't go ape for them. i get my cultures from a place called angels plus. fairly cheap, but the worms don't ship well during weather extremes, so that's something to consider.

it's not really a fuge if it doesn't attach to the display, it's just another tank. ;)

you can move the rocks back and forth, or you can do what is referred to as "pod condos". a lot of people use these to help facilitate the movement of pods from their sump to their display. they're essentially just small bundles of gravel held together with plastic mesh or gutter guard. i've also seen people use the loofa sponges, or large balls of chaeto, and just shake them out in to their sump/display.

you could also set up some pod cultures externally if you have the room. they're fairly easy to maintain. i used to culture phyto to feed to my pods, but broke down all my cultures during a recent move, and haven't put them back together yet. there are some great tutorials around, and i got all my equipment from a place called brine shrimp direct that sells all kinds of sieves and such. all you need are some culture vessels (i used old plastic pretzel containers, but anything that holds water works), and some starter cultures of phyto/pods. some people don't bother with the phyto and use fish food instead.

as far as the scooter goes, it seems odd to me that it would be accepting frozen foods but not foraging on its own. i've never seen that. usually they if they're not foraging, they're not eating, period.

out of curiosity, what's your setup like, how large, how old, etc... and how long have you had your mandy?

perhaps an ORA Scooter Dragonet might work best in your set up? they eat pellets and mysis and should be tougher than wild collected.

although i would imagine they also eat copepods too.