I got my mandarin trained eating mysis and let him in the tank only to realize that all his tankmates (the clowns) beat him to the food 99 percent of the time. After going to TAP Plastics with todd I notice the box. So I bought it and put it in the tank hoping that if the food is trap inside the clown won't go in and eat it but the Mandarin will. This did not work until I realize that it might be scared of being trapped inside. As you can see I cut a bunch more holes. I am theorizing that if there is an entrance + exit they will come in. So to cut it short, I trained him to eat out of an acrylic rigid tubing and follows it. After a while this become annoying as people who have mandarins know they eat 1 mysis or brine shrimp at one time. They would suck bite (sometime spits) chew then swallow and the process takes about 3-5 seconds. I don't want to wait on him =). Since he follows the rigid tubing, I made him follow and shot some in the box and eats from it. I only put it in the water when there is food. So this is the third day of success for the box, everytime I put the box in if he sees it he will camp in front of the box entrance and look at me shooting the food in the box. He will swim around the whole tank and return to the entrance and eat (kinda weird).
Sorry, its almost midnight so my typing is erratic as well as my thoughts. As for the food if I had not mention, its a switch between sprinula brine, hikari frozen brine and hikari frozen mysis.
