Red Scooter Dragonet

The Red Scooter Dragonet, frequently mislabeled as a ‘Red Scooter Blenny’, is similar to the Green Mandarinfish in it’s body shape and also a member of the Dragonet family. The ‘Blenny’ name is meant to disguise the high level of care this fish requires.

The Scooter Dragonets coloration is not considered as pretty as the Green or Target Mandarinfish. However on closer inspection, the brown, tan and black patterns give way to intricate markings making this fish an excellent and fascinating choice for the home aquarium. Unfortunately, this fish is often assigned the same fate that other members of the Dragonet family.

In the wild, Dragonet’s will spend their day hovering among rocks picking at small crustaceans including copepods, amphipods. Their mouths are very small and they are very slow and methodic feeders, making live adult brine shrimp an impractical long term food source.

Many gobies, Dottybacks/Pseudochromis, Damselfish, Anthias, Basslets, and many others will compete with the slow eating Dragonet.

Diet, Requires live foods such as copepods, and amphipods. Sometimes frozen artemia (baby brine shrimp) can be introduced as a supplement. It will take a long time and a lot of patience with the Dragonets to help them adjust to a captive diet.

Please Note: Dragonets are incredibly difficult if not impossible to adapt to a captive diet and will rarely accept anything but the tiniest of live foods.

Dragonets should never be introduced to an aquarium smaller than 150 litres and should equally never be introduced to an aquarium that is less than at LEAST 6 – 8 months old as it usually takes their main food source this amount of time to properly populate.