Curiousity ends up getting the best of them. My two scooters both eat all pellets and frozen foods. For pellets they eat formula 1 & formula 2 and some other brand I use. The nice part about the pellets is that I will just spray like 40 pellets into the tank and maby 10-12 will hit the ground before the other fish get to them and the scooters will immediatly hunt them all down and clean up.
The mandarian will only eat frozens, it likes mysis, cyclo (hard to feed cuz it breaks up so fast), brine, formula (red frozen stuff, too lazy to check its name), & reef plankton it will try and eat clam and squid but its usually too tough for it.
The scooters caught on to the prepared foods first, actually my male caught on the second week I had him. At first I would hold an entire cube of brine infront of him with the tongs, at first he was scared but then he eventually started nibbling at it and now they go berzerk the second the tongs enter the water. The mandarin took much longer but it eventually caught on from constaly swimming over corals one day it decided to nibble the food hanging out of their mouth. I saw that so I took out the tong and gave her another shot and vuala she was nibbling away.
The funny part is, I could pick up all three of these dragonets with the tongs if I wanted and they would never even flinch but if I put my hands near my male scooter he will go ape **** and spaz out now.
(as for the pod pile, the bigger the better obviously if it works for you just put it behind your rocks if you have any back pathways)