hihi heard my name here haha!
ok some things to take note. i did not intentionally starve my mandarin lol. when i got it, it wasnt feeding on anything, like most mandarins. it survived in my then quite new tank, for awhile. slowly getting thinner and thinner. pods i had alot back then as my tank was quite fishless in the start up. but of course, being a new tank, pods were insufficient for it.
i believe once you release the mandarin into the main tank, there is no such thing as "training". as they are freaking slow movers and eaters, there is no way to train it once in the display. for all you know, it could already be a pellet feeding one, just that he has no chance since he is soo slow.
anyway, after around 5-6 months, my mandarin starting taking his first bite of pellet food. He was lucky i guess. the pellets floated to a small quiet corner and he took a bite. since then he has been eating pellets.
now this is the part which i have trained. my mandarin can eat around 60 pellets a day. at the right side of my tank where my elegance is, is a small quiet corner. i will throw pellets into my tank and let the fast feeding fishes fight for it. and then i will sprinkle some pellets on the low flow area and let them stay on the sand. then my mandarin will go to that area to eat the pellets at his own sweet time. all this while im throwing abit of pellets at the high flowing area so my other fishes get distracted. this is a good method. throw just enough for the fast feeding fish to finish feeding.
my mandarin fish is 1 year old now. and is fat like a cow. i believe i was just lucky to find one that took a liking to prepared food. but i did train him to eat from a given spot.
this is my blue mandarin. fat hor?