Starving mandarin plz help! Need to buy copepods or live brine shrimp ASAP!

[reefEnVy]

But like I said, he slams down on live brine shrimp. He loves those more than the pods..

[FarmerTy]

The long term problem is that brine shrimp are not very nutritious. Its like feeding a bird bread, it'll fill its stomach but eventually the lack of nutrition will catch up to it. You can try enriched brine shrimp and mix it in with the live brine to try to get some more nutrition in it.

Otherwise, day by day, that pretty fish is just slowing wasting away.

[Sherita]

Brine shrimp are nowhere near the ideal food for him. If you could raise them, and gutload them, it *might* be enough to keep him alive. But feeding live brine without enrichment isn't going to keep him alive long term. You either need to find him an appropriate home, or get him eating frozen. The other alternative is to order/buy pods and keep feeding him.

I do have mandarins, and have/are keeping them long term. Mine have been with me over two years at present. I have three of them. One in the 140g, one in the 65g and one in the 75g. All three tanks have a ton of pods, and all three mandarins are trained to eat frozen.

[etschoerner]

My target will eat frozen bloodworms might try that.

[+brian.srock]

Try growing some pods in a 5 gallon bucket. All you need is phyto and a culture of pods or chaeto from someone that has pods and they will populate in the bucket then you can tranfser to the tank.

http://www.brineshrimpdirect.com/Rotifers-101-c200.html