Mandarin Starving...what to do?

Recent pics of my mandarin....


added some new pics to my album.

 

Something you could try that's working for me. Get a syringe used for feeding human baby's medicine and attach 6-8" of airline tubing to it. My Mandarin was eating frozen brine at the pet shop. I turn off all of my pumps. Once she sees the brine in the tubing.. push the syringe a little. They will notice the movement and move closer. she eats right out of the tube and you wont be polluting the crap out of your tank.. Now I'm mixing Mysis with the brine (all frozen, no live). Get the mysis halway out of the tube then let it sit partially in the tube.. now that she's familiar with the tube as having food, she will assume the food is good. She has been taking a little mysis the past few days, but is really partial to the brine unfortunately ( I tried to trick her too early and switched to 100% mysis after she ate a few the days prior. she ate the first few pieces then stopped.. fed some brine and she ate it.. nice) . I'm using Hikari gutloaded frozen brine, and of course she has pods to eat. I'm hoping to have her on mysis 100% soon! Goodluck!

 

hatch some brine babys they look just like copepods just make ur flow is low

 

i dont mean any offense but, wat kind of lfs do u have because the ones i go to , could most definatly take care of a mandarin very well, i dont understand y you feel that giving it back to an lfs who SHOULD have a proper set up for them if they sell them, would mean the death of ur mandarin?

idk i'm pulling for ya but i was just wondering y you feel your fish place would kill it.

 

they readily take live bloodworms, not sure how old this is, i am still on page 1

my lfs starves them, they dont last long in those tanks, i can see your dilemma. the problem is in their fish tanks their is very little structure and lots of predation. hard to keep pods up in that type of system.

 

Well Put JohnMaloney. Most fish stores don't have the capacity to keep mandarins long term. Most places put them in a 5 gallon tank with some chaeto from the fuge. They are also placed with other pod eaters like six lines and scooters. You would be very surprised at how many mandarins die at the fish store.....barely any. Barely any because they sell out fast. People love mandarins and they are very cheap, so they sell well. A lot of people buy them knowing they will only live for 6 months, then when it starves they go get another. So if I take this poor fish back to the fish store, do you think they will quarantine it and place it in a fuge for a month to nurse it back to full strength? No, they will simply toss it in a tank and sell it the next day. Most LFS don't care about nursing a fish. It would be more cost effective to let it die or sell it right away then to constantly monitor it, spot feed tigerpods, ect. On the other hand, I know I will nurse this fish back to health or at least try my hardest to do so. It has already shown noticeable improvement since my first post. I would rather the fishes fate be in my hands then the LFS.

 

Agreed!!! K+

 

I agree too.. the LFS I bought mine from had 5 lbs of live rock in the tank, and they were feeding her frozen brine. To me that's a death sentence, especially when I know she ate frozen brine, I knew I could wean her on frozen mysis. So here's an update on my Mandarin. I went on vacation for the weekend and came home with tons of pods still in my tank. I mixed somefrozen Rod's food, mysis, and a little bit of the brine that she's used to eating at the LFS. As soon as she saw the feeding tube go into the tank she bolted for it, and ate anything that came out of it. I tricked her by letting the food hang part way out of the tube. So now I have a mandarin that now eats frozen mysis and Rod's food. She munched up a huge chunk of squid. I am very happy right now!

 

Congrats!! I really need to intro a feeding tube to get mine eating other things

 

check your LFS for a bag of live pods mine sells a big bag of them for 10$ and then poot a rubble pile in there like LPC136