HELP Mandarin Withering!

please help if you could, i have an adult male mandarin who is wasting away. i bought the fish in early February'06 and he has been eating ever since but is noticably losing wait. i have had my reef going for over a year so i would have plenty of pods for eating. and he eats all day but to no avail. the female(much smaller) does the same but is keeping a healthy weight appearence. whats the deal? i have stocked over 4,000 tigger pods in the tank just to make sure there is food available. is this possibly not enough? i know this is a tough species and that is why i waited over a year to fully mature the tank, so what is the deal. any information may prove useful, i would feel terrible to have the female lose her mate.

 

This is somthing i have come across when careing for dragonets. Some seem to eat fine and are happy and then one day they just are gone. Do you actually see the fish eat? I know with dragonets they will suck at the rock and sand but im not sure if they actually eat uness i see them eating brine or some other food. Try feeding them prepared foods or live brine and see if they go for it.

 

That sucks. WHat other foods have you tried?

 

Well its good you had him live this long! The one I bought last week died in TWO freaking days! I know there was no shortage of pods, as my tank has been going for 4 years. All I can guess is with 2 mandarins, the pod pop. is going down FAST even with you adding them. Maybe the female knows of a rock that is the jackpot for pods that the male hasn't discovered? Try getting them on live brine or live bloodworms. I've heard of this being possible. Although in 2 days of mine being alive I didn't have the chance to find out. These are by far my favorite fish, but (and I hate to sound so negative) unless I start seeing tank raised mandarins, I will never buy one again (I've gone through 3). GOOD LUCK!

 

i'll try to find some live brines or bloodworms locally, they are very picky and will not touch frozen brines or mysid. they want the real thing. thanks guys anyone else have any pointers?

 

Zissou any luck on getting the mandarin to eat live brines or bloodworms???

 

try bloodworms or brine shrimp my mandarin eats both but maby try adding a few drops of garlic to it sometimes the scent of garlic entices hard to feed fish into eating its worth a shot

 

hey folks little update on the mandarins, today i fed them live blood worms. the male went into attack mode as soon as they hit the bottom and i saw him pound quite a few. the female remained interested but i am not sure if she ate any, she is shy but definately seemed interested. i am going to keep this up twice a day morning and night. they are such a cute pair, thanks for the concern everybody. i will try to post a pic butit may be subpar(camera sucks).

 

With 2 mandarins in a 55 gallon tank along with a 6 line wrasse you are going to have a very hard time keeping a pod population (I assume you have a refugium for growing pods?) any where close to keeping those guys fed. I have 2 in my 230g and I worry that they are not getting enough to eat. It's great that he has started taking to the bloodworms but I am not too sure if that will sustain him long term as it is not a natural food for them and I know that there is debate on whether they get nourishment from them. You may want to think about putting the wrasse in another tank as they are notorious pod eaters.