Get the best live food for Mandarin fish and the best live food for Seahorses in one place.

Copepods and Amphipods are the natural live food for Mandarin Fish and Seahorses within the Whole Life Cycle Aquarium.

In regards to mandarin fish and some facts, live Amphipods and Copepods are the main food source for Mandarin fish in the wild.

Mandarin fish or Dragonets are beautiful interesting coral reef fish. In their natural environment, they have evolved as a constant forager, meaning they have to constantly hunt and eat live prey such as Copepods and Amphipods all day. 

 

Mandarin fish have a large territory compared to their relative size. Growing to no more than 3 inches in length, they can cover an area of 200 square feet and larger as they forage all day for live Amphipods on the coral reef. They can, when housed in an aquarium tank, deplete all their live food and slowly starve if not provided with an adequate environment and constant food source.

Mandarin fish are methodical slow eaters, shy and non-aggressive by nature, so they will have a difficult time competing with other faster eating and more aggressive tank mates.

When keeping a Mandarin fish, consider carefully what type of fish you house them with in the aquarium. Not so much that other fish will attack them directly, but they will consume the mandarin’s food source Amphipods faster than the Mandarin.

Fish like Mandarin and Seahorses need to eat food all day. Feeding them once or twice a day is not sufficient. With this in mind, if you plan your tank setup carefully, you can achieve  longevity and health in your Seahorses and Mandarins.

Suggestions for tank mates for Mandarin fish:

Seahorses; Slow moving and have very similar nature as the mandarin. Seahorses forage all day and are semi sedentary foragers. Slow eaters and non-aggressive eaters.

Jaw Fish: a sedentary non-aggressive fish which stays mostly in one place on the reef and waits for food to come by.

Suggestions for habitat set up:

Try to recreate as close as possible the natural habitat these fish live in. Important to keep in mind the needs of the Mandarin fish’s prey animals as well.

Ask yourself what habitat do Amphipods and Copepods need?

You can never have too many hiding places in small rock crevices and Macro Algae like Chaetomorpha (Chaeto). This environment will provide a home for the Amphipods so they can establish a breeding colony. It’s important for these fish and prey animals to be able to co-exist together as they do in the wild. Even though you are mostly focused on feeding and taking care of your main display animal, make sure you feed the Copepods and Amphipods in the tank as well.

 

 

Food for Amphipods;

Amphipods and benthic Copepods like Tisbe and Tigger Pods are scavengers and easy to feed. Just add some meaty food such as our Coral Extacy hatching liquid coral food concentrated preserved in liquid copepods.

Conclusions:

Seahorse and Mandarin fish will eat the juvenile Amphipods and leave the adults alone to breed more generations of live food in your tank.

Copepods are a great nutritious food source but populations can get depleted faster than amphipod populations.

Buy live Amphipod and Copepod cultures.

Set up a bi weekly or monthly Amphipod subscription so you replenish your prey animals every so often.

Establish Amphipod and Copepod breeding colony.

Provide adequate habitat not just for the fish but also for the zooplankton.

Keep compatible animals together in the same system setup.

Feed the prey animals as well as the main fish.