Training a mandarin.

As the title states i have been training a mandarin goby for the last 3 weeks to eat frozen.

Now i have prepped for the fact he would not take to frozen, so i got 2 bags of posidens feast and dumped it into my tank and sump over a month ago. In my sump i have 4 pod condos going and alot of rubble rock and sand in there. Luckily though he took right to eating frozen and is a pig about it. I have him in a breeder basket and started off with the "put a little in there and then take out the leftovers 15 minutes later" method for the first week. Then i decided to try the pippet feeding. That took about a week for him to catch on too. But now he eats right out of it. I have even noticed he gets excited when he sees me and when i look down on him he will come up to the top and actually put part of his head out of the water and stares at me, so last night i decided to see if he would eat out of my fingers and he did. He even eats pellets.

My question now is when should i feel safe to release him into the tank? How long should i have him eating out of the pipette before i can trust it will come up to me in the tank where he isnt confined to a small space. I'm happy with how fat he has gotten since i got him (he was sucked in) so I'm not worried about his health. But i know if he dont come up to the pipette he wont be able to compete with the other fish for food since he is a lazy eater. I know i will have pods but i dont want want him to only eat those.

Any advice would be appreciated. Besides the "dont get a mandarin" advise.

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What about getting one of those really long turkey baster coral feeders... like the one from V2O?

Make sure you stay on top of the feedings and add supplements to the food. I had a frozen eating mandarin and i got lazy and eventually it starved like most mandarins.

I have been looking at some long 18" ones, probably order one tonight. I just dont k ow how long i should have him feeding from it from the basket before i let him loose where he has alot of running/hiding room. I do feel like we have bonded and we are buddies now, but that all could change when he is loose.

Feeding wont be a problem. My daughter has kept a handle on animal feeding duty for 2 years now. Thats her job and she gets mad if anybody else does it. Plus i have planed to keep adding a bag of pods every month unless i know the population is healthy.

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