Mandarins keeping alive for more than 6-7yrs

Our Mandy was with us for 8 years. It took frozen and I doubt it ever got anything in the way of pods. My tank was bare bottom and it had a pod munching leopard wrasse and pipefish in there for competition. The wrasse was around just as long, and the pipe had been in there 3-4 years before being moved. So, it was a lengthy cohabitation in the grand scheme of the hobby, I guess.

I don't believe a frozen is their downfall..... I believe a non-varying, old poor frozen diet is. Old as in anything kept in the freezer too long. Ours lost weight when it went through a divorce (not only kids are affected!) and he was being fed minimally at the prior residence. He was receiving your basic common cubed foods. He regained all his weight when he got back into our care.

We're not really sure what happened to the Mandy. He had this white mark on him that had the shape of a stinging tentacle, right down to the tapered tip, so we think he got stung by a coral/anemone. The skin healed up, but he was blind in that eye and just never thrived after that.

He LOVED black worms. The whole tank went snakey for them.

 

Thats really good... Did u ever try feeding new born brine? they say they have egg yolk attached and thats high in protien... calling for frozen stuff is falling too dam expensive, like 7times the cost due to shipping and duty...

 

No, we never fed that out because that's a really small food item for fish in that tank. Being a 55g, it would have gotten lost in the crevices before being eaten by the fish. We shave food fish from the market for our fish, mixed with some prepared foods like mysis and frozen brine (for some fish like my orange spot filefish). We dose the foods when we can with vitamins and beta glucan and use vitamin C in the water column. Vitamin C is SO important and SO hard to get to your fish without proper attention. Stress tolerance and Vitamin C has been very well documented in "real" studies. I think many diets are subpar. The nutritional needs of coral have gotten MUCH more press than the nutritional needs of fish. I recently heard a well respected fish food provider say freshwater fish were better for marine fish than their own native salties.... because of salt content!!!!! If this is who we are listening to, how can we except our fish to be "well fed".

 

Nice... this is the same what i think..... i love all my pets and i dont buy without proper research..... this is the main reason of starting this thread as i want info from people who have been keeping this fish for many years (its full lifespan) happy, healthy and thriving...... dint know about vitamin C... can u give more details? and did mean tht brine is not good? i was planning to feed it in a jar so it can have all...

 

My wife has a pair of green spot mandarins that have been healthy for two years and does the nightly mating dance which I think is a good sign of long term health. I attribute it to their food. We feed three times a day a combination of mysis, decapped brine shrimp eggs (hatching seems likely to just lose nutrients), nutramar ova, cyclopeze, rotifers, and oyster ova. I've seen them eat each of those ingredients except the oyster and rotis.

 

Brine before their first molt are awesome. I used adult brine so it could be eaten by the whole community verses the few.

Vitamin C has mostly been studied in the aquaculture sector. You can well imagine why fish farmers would be interested in nutrition and it's relation to stress tolerance. Farmed fish are exposed to a lot of stress from over crowding, handling, water quality, etc. They've added quite large amounts of vitamin C to a group of fish while maintaining a control population. There were less deaths and/or illness in those receiving the higher levels. They performed "challenges" like air exposure, temperature swings, marked salinity challenges and evaluated the two groups for their response. Blood test we drawn to check for stress hormones and such as well as vitamin C samples in the fish skin/flesh and bones. These studies have been repeated many times and it's benefits are now without question.

The problem is, getting the vitamin C to your fish. It's easily oxidized. Aquaculture peeps don't even have it added to their prepared food items. They add it immediately before feeding the food out to the fish. I use a stabilized vitamin C which isn't easy to find.

It can be absorbed directly into their bloodstream through their gills or eaten.

 

we do get Vitamin C pills here at the chemist... iv eaten them long back... can we add fresh lemon juice?

 

i have cyclopeeze flakes...rest all will cost me 7-8 times due to shipping and duty.. + since its frozen, it might be useless since it can remain frozen for long...

 

So the new hatched are good right? or should i culture them and feed them plankton, cyclopeeze etc. and then feed mandarins?

 

We use to feed out the newly hatched that day and what we didn't use, we would grow out until they had mouths to eat and then enrich them. It needs to be a superfine powder. They wouldn't be able to eat cyclopeeze itself. I've used spurulina powder, Naturose, Beta Glucan and some others. The best way is to blend the powder into the water first an then add the brine. So, newly hatched, add nothing. Hatched for a couple of days, add a nice enrichment.