Green mandarin experts

[nait002]

Well been a little more than 3 weeks now. Guess who finally showed up for the party? The little guy finally came out last night. Then he was out again this morning. Unbelievable! I was looking at mandarins at the LFS yesterday and glad I didn't buy one. He doesn't look the best though. His stomach is a bit thin which I don't understand. I have an incredible amount of pods in the tank. Mabey he's tired of the buffet. Any suggestions?

 

[Angel*Fish]

:celeb2: :celeb3: :celeb2: Glad he turned up!

Well if we're definitely speaking of the spotted mandarin (too lazy to review thread) They may be more inclined towards eating foods you add to the tank.

I have a picky anthias that I hatch live baby brine for on a daily basis. don't know if they started right away as it wasn't really for the mandarins - but when add the BBS the mandarins are out & clearly eating them. They seem to kind of pretend to be picking them off the rocks. they go after them with gusto!

Anyway it couldn't hurt to hatch a teaspoon of these & feed them to your tank a couple of times & see what happens.

Caveat: I feed enough of these at once to "fill" the tank with them - it's an amount equivalent to maybe 2 cubes of frozen food.

I wish I could tell you if they took to them immediately or not _ I just wasn't paying attn.

Keep feding those pods daily with DT's!!

Buy a piece of uncured live rock & put it in your tank (assuming you're fine with the bioload) it should cause a copepod explosion on that rock

Buy any fast growing macro algae - especially chaeto

I know you have lots of pods... do you know what kind? My tank is p-a-c-k-e-d with amphipods, but it I don't think these are what my mandarins seem to go after


HTH Glad he turned up - maybe he was kinda having an adjustment issue or was sick & will feed like crazy now.
Now that you've found him, do you see him continuously? Sounded like it from "again this morning".

 

[impur]

Glad he showed up!!

Marie's suggestion of the baby brine is good, they usually eat that stuff up. I found that frozen blood worms worked well too.

 

[plaz]

You may have the wrong kind of pods. If he is a small mandarin, they eat copepods almost exclusively. I can't even see the ones mine eats - amphipods and bigger pods walk right by him.

 

[nait002]

Well I've seen him every day this week. He is always eating of the rocks. I don't know if he wasn't eating for those 3 weeks. Mabey just hidding out. He seems to be doing ok though.

 

[plaz]

Glad to hear he is coming around! They do seem to be very emotionally sensitive little creatures!

 

[Cutiewitbooty]

I used to have one that would eat mysis and brine, so if you are a little worried about it you could try feeding him and see what happens.

 

[Archer]

Thanks to all who've posted. I just got a Green Spotted Mandarine last Thursday. I haven't seen her (live or dead) since, and was very worried she was toast. I'll give it more time, and continue with the "where's Waldo" game.