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Fat starfish

How to keep Manderin Fish?

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Fat starfish
, 05-12-2010 at 08:19 AM (1259 Views)
Hi, I recently tried keeping my first Mandarin Fish. I had plenty of tiny creatures in my sump, assumed to be copopods, and added corals on live rocks weekly to keep the copopod population high. Initially, I thought he would adapt to my aquarium well, he regularly nibbled at rocks and substrate. After a few weeks, he went missing for a few days, and when I located him he was terribly skinny and weak. He died. Do you have advice on keeping Mandarins? Would cultivation and addition of phytoplankton to the aquarium provide the necessary nutrients for the survival of copopods? Thanks
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  1. austin93's Avatar
    I have a spotted green mandarin that I have had for over 2 years now and it is a fat little toad. I think the key to keeping these types of fish are getting healthy specimen in the first place. The vast majority that I see in the stores are already starving. When you look for specimen to buy, make sure their gut isn't pinched in as this is a sign they are probably already too far gone. You could also just wait a little while longer and get one of the tank raised mandarins from ORA.
  2. Douwant2play's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by austin93
    You could also just wait a little while longer and get one of the tank raised mandarins from ORA.
    Hmmmmm.....More info please. Didn't know they were doing this.
  3. austin93's Avatar
    My lfs said that they should be coming to the stores this summer.
  4. melev's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Douwant2play
    Hmmmmm.....More info please. Didn't know they were doing this.
    We posted it in the In The News Category about a month ago:
    http://www.reefaddicts.com/content.p...prepared-foods
  5. melev's Avatar
    Copepods are tiny tiny dots. Almost invisible to the eye, compared to many other pods we see scurrying about. http://www.melevsreef.com/id/pods.html

    Adding phytoplankton to the system will fed the pods so that they may thrive and make more of themselves, providing an ongoing meal for your reeflings. As Austin suggested, you may have gotten one that was already too thin, or something else led to its demise. I've got a beautiful female Psychedelic in my reef, and she's been with me 5 years this November. When I added a healthy male that was given to my by a local club member, they were quick to find one another and could be observed doing the nightly mating dance. However, within six months he died - seemingly of starvation. She on the other hand was completely fat and happy. I don't know why one made it and the other did not. Perhaps it was an internal parasite.
  6. stangchris's Avatar
    just as everyone said they are very hard to keep, my first one died in 2 weeks, i waited and found one at a lfs, the fish had been there a month and was fat so a very healthy fish to begin with, after 2 weeks of dropping the tiny formula one pellets on his head and in corner of tank where he only went i had him eating the pellets. ive seen a couple articles where people put jars,with an opening big enough for mandarin, with tiny food such as pellets to train them to eat. another food you can try that ive read mandarins love and so does mine is nutramars ova,i just squirt it on the rocks the fish is by(all pumps off) and he picks at it. good luck
    http://www.marinedepot.com/Nutramar_...FZFSFP-vi.html