reefEnVy Posted January 30, 2014 Share Posted January 30, 2014 My mandarin is starving and my wrasse and mandarin are butting heads. Need a steady supply of live copepods or brine shrimp. No where in Austin can I find a steady or cheap way of feeding them. Aqua dome only gets them bi weekly. I'm offering cash, I just don't want him starving to death. He needs a better home IMO but I'd rather feed him as they are my fav fish. Anyways if you have a breeder tank of pods or have plenty of live rock with copepods or can sell me live brine shrimp or pods plz hit me up! Don't want my guy to die, had him for over seven months. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jimbo662 Posted January 30, 2014 Share Posted January 30, 2014 WHOOPS... just reread the statement about the dome. The Dome usually has live brine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+o0zarkawater Posted January 30, 2014 Share Posted January 30, 2014 River City has the Reef Nutrition Tigger Pods usually, which would be better long term than brine if you can seed your refugium. Call first though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+o0zarkawater Posted January 30, 2014 Share Posted January 30, 2014 There also isn't really a cheap way of feeding them if your tank is not mature enough. Cope/Amphi Pods are expensive regardless of where they come from. Normally you wait at least a year before adding any of the fish that are notorious to not only decimate pod populations, but ones that feed mainly on pods. So unless you can make pod havens in your fuge and keep them safe to breed, you might not ever be able to keep them fat and healthy. I have in the past had both target mandarins and green mandarins start eating both frozen and pellet foods. It takes a while and some luck, but it can happen. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Planeden Posted January 30, 2014 Share Posted January 30, 2014 recently several people here have been talking about pod condos. may be worth checking out for a long term solution. also, mr. cob has been training mandarins to eat frozen foods. may want to check his thread to see if you can do that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ct67stang Posted January 30, 2014 Share Posted January 30, 2014 aquatek has live worms I think blood worms but not positive. my mandarin jets to them on sight. ive also used them and then added 50% live and 50% frozen to get them eating frozen and worked well on my spotted and green mandarin Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
reefEnVy Posted January 30, 2014 Author Share Posted January 30, 2014 Sad part I only have stock 29 gal biocube. It was doing great until I added the six line pig wrasse two months ago. He eats everything. I'm trying to find a way I can add as much pods in my system as possible. I would really like a refug tank or sump but I haven't had the money or time to invest into that yet. Hopefully I can find something or someone to help me get my tank to support my load of fish. I really love my mandarin, but this one I couldn't train to eat frozen. I pray for a good deal on sump or refug tank that I can add to my system. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FarmerTy Posted January 30, 2014 Share Posted January 30, 2014 The mandarins eat roughly a pod every 10 seconds. If you are really interested in guaranteeing its survival, I would get it into someone else's large and established tank until it got to a healthy weight again. Otherwise, you'll be spending a ton of money trying to feed it bottles of pods from the store. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
reefEnVy Posted January 30, 2014 Author Share Posted January 30, 2014 Yeah last two months I've spent over $160 tell me about it Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+etannert Posted January 30, 2014 Share Posted January 30, 2014 +1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ckyuv Posted January 30, 2014 Share Posted January 30, 2014 I've tried keeping both a wrasse and mandarin in a 40g and it was too small to keep up sufficient pod populations, I would remove one of the fish or your Gona have trouble keeping up pod population most likely Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
reefEnVy Posted January 30, 2014 Author Share Posted January 30, 2014 Or if anyone could train him I'd love to give it to you and pay u one you trained it to eat frozen. I use frozen cyclopeeze and brine shrimp, but I could get whatever trained to eat Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+o0zarkawater Posted January 30, 2014 Share Posted January 30, 2014 If it was female, and you posted this on Tuesday, I would have gladly taken it.... but I just added a female to my system on Weds to hang out with my male. There are HOB refugiums available, or you can also make your own out of an old aquaclear HOB filter for cheap. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mFrame Posted January 30, 2014 Share Posted January 30, 2014 Do you know if it's a male or female? Posting a pic might help. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Jakedoza Posted January 30, 2014 Share Posted January 30, 2014 Sad part I only have stock 29 gal biocube. It was doing great until I added the six line pig wrasse two months ago. He eats everything. I'm trying to find a way I can add as much pods in my system as possible. I would really like a refug tank or sump but I haven't had the money or time to invest into that yet. Hopefully I can find something or someone to help me get my tank to support my load of fish. I really love my mandarin, but this one I couldn't train to eat frozen. I pray for a good deal on sump or refug tank that I can add to my system. yeah.. sadly in a 29 this is not going to be possible unless you have a HOB refugium that can steadily supply the tank with new critters for them to eat. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sascha D. Posted January 31, 2014 Share Posted January 31, 2014 IMO your pod hunters are too high for a 29g. If you want to keep the mandarin, and you don't want to buy pods, then you only really have two options: Remove the wrasses from the tank and seed the tank with pods or Start farming pods in a separate tank. You could add a refugium, but I believe the dragonet will still starve. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mFrame Posted January 31, 2014 Share Posted January 31, 2014 Probably the best option is to return the mandarin or get it to someone who has a tank that can support it. The ORA target mandarins are generally sold eating frozen food or pellets so they would be a better candidate for your tank. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
reefEnVy Posted February 1, 2014 Author Share Posted February 1, 2014 It's a huge male he has the long gated fin on top that spikes up. Where can I find these refugium tanks you guys speak of? I have zero knowledge on these.. I would love to get rid of the six line but don't know how to catch him bc I have a very heavy coral packed tank and would take hours of work to remove them and the rock. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Planeden Posted February 1, 2014 Share Posted February 1, 2014 I saw some HOB refugiume on amazon recently. You can probably find some, and advice on them locally. Several people have built them from regular filters and you can probably find build threads on here or start a "help me build" thread. I think the trade off is the filters give more low but are a lot cheaper. I'm not sure of the benefit, but the refugiume were on the order of 4 gph compared to 100 gph, or whatever, for the filters. I have no experience with traps, either. But try one of those to catch the wrasse. You can buy them or make them out of coke bottles and things. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FarmerTy Posted February 1, 2014 Share Posted February 1, 2014 I would honestly rehome the mandarin. A small hang on refugium will not ever produce enough pods to sustain him, not to mention the start up time to get the refugium going in the first place. 1) hate for the senseless death of a fish that could possibly be saved by someone else 2) don't want you to have to waste all that money setting up a refugium thinking it might sustain the fish in the long run just to find out it won't. As always, there are exceptions to the rule but the likelihood of it being sustained with that refugium is unlikely. I would honestly spend my time/money on trying to train it to eat other foods than chasing the refugium route. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kingjames Posted February 1, 2014 Share Posted February 1, 2014 The facts are all over the internet....These fish have an extrmely fast metabolism, if they eat a pod every ten seconds then even in a small refugium pods cant possible reproduce that quickly, even ORA put there mandarin breeding to a halt because of the fact that they did eat prepared food, but to keep them healthy you would have to feed them like ten times per day if not more and even then they are prob still not getting enough to eat at night, The fact is this fish almost never stops looking for food.... this being said even the survival rate of the captive bread species were very slim.....The only mandarins i have ever seen thrive were in systems that were 100g or larger with tons of live rock and a refugium.....Belive me i have wanted one since the first day of keeping saltwater and had one in the beginning and watched it slowly starve to death in my 55g that had been set up for two years with no other fish in it that regularly hunt copeapods........And then with just a simple google search you will find literaly hundreds of threads with the same topic "starving mandarin goby"...Im sure there are a few speacial cases but if i was a betting man i would bet that 80-90 percent of mandarins in sold in our hobby slowly starve to death... this web adress below is good read on this .....excuse the spelling errors http://www.reef2reef.com/forums/unique-corals/147481-where-have-all-captive-bred-mandarins-gone.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
reefEnVy Posted February 1, 2014 Author Share Posted February 1, 2014 Yeah I had spotted mandarin in my last tank who ate frozen food with in the first week of owning him. Thought I could get this on to but I was wrong.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
victoly Posted February 1, 2014 Share Posted February 1, 2014 The facts are all over the internet....These fish have an extrmely fast metabolism, if they eat a pod every ten seconds then even in a small refugium pods cant possible reproduce that quickly, even ORA put there mandarin breeding to a halt because of the fact that they did eat prepared food, but to keep them healthy you would have to feed them like ten times per day if not more and even then they are prob still not getting enough to eat at night, The fact is this fish almost never stops looking for food.... this being said even the survival rate of the captive bread species were very slim.....The only mandarins i have ever seen thrive were in systems that were 100g or larger with tons of live rock and a refugium.....Belive me i have wanted one since the first day of keeping saltwater and had one in the beginning and watched it slowly starve to death in my 55g that had been set up for two years with no other fish in it that regularly hunt copeapods........And then with just a simple google search you will find literaly hundreds of threads with the same topic "starving mandarin goby"...Im sure there are a few speacial cases but if i was a betting man i would bet that 80-90 percent of mandarins in sold in our hobby slowly starve to death... this web adress below is good read on this .....excuse the spelling errors http://www.reef2reef.com/forums/unique-corals/147481-where-have-all-captive-bred-mandarins-gone.html The part about ORA isn't exactly true. http://blog.aquanerd.com/2014/01/aquarists-do-not-support-captive-breeding.html Scott shared a little of his frustrations about the virtual disappearance of captive-bred mandarin dragonets from Oceans Reefs and Aquariums (ORA). In a nutshell, he was told by an ORA rep that the dragonet breeding program had essentially been shelved due to the lack of support from aquarium hobbyists. This was due to the fact that wild-caught mandarins were far too cheap for the captive-bred variety to compete with. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sherita Posted February 2, 2014 Share Posted February 2, 2014 I've talked to a couple of people who got the ORA mandies, and they still didn't do well. OP, if you can keep him alive until I come down next weekend, I can offer him a home in my 90g that is crawling with pods, and no other pod eaters. You don't have time to establish a fuge or pod farm before he's going to die, and your pod eating load is too heavy for the size tank you have. I've got both a 90 and a 72 loaded with pods that he could move into. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
reefEnVy Posted February 2, 2014 Author Share Posted February 2, 2014 I added a pic of him he's a very beautiful fish! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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