What to feed mandrinfish?

[the oracle]

My mandrinfish is getting skinny day by day. he is not eating even i place pellet in front of it. help needed!

[RockyBoy]

mandarin normally eat copepods found loitering in the rocks. If your tank is not mature enough, there might not be enough copepods for it to feed on and would die of hunger. Try subsituting the Artic-pods sold by AM. Might induced it to eat the dead pods.

[fishchemist]

You can try live brine shrimp.

[Underwater]

if artic pods or live brine shrimp also cannot get it to feed or simply too many competing fishes for the food, and if you have a sump tank, put it in there as there's a higher chance of more copepods there and no competition for fd instead of seeing it dying of hunger in the main tank.

[the oracle]

will do so later! thanks!

[the oracle]

Sad Sad, trying to put in seperate thank after back from work but die liao!

[MapleReef]

Your tank has to be at least a Year old and try adding a Refugium (initial set-up) with Caulerpa macro algae (better if you can get some from local reefer's sump/fuge as they're always filled with 'Pods) and by then your DT, Sump and Refugium should have more than enough Copepods to feed the Mandarin.

Feeding the Mandarins live, dried or frozen foods doesn't guarantee that it'll feed on it. It's a Hit 'N Miss!!

HTH,

Paul

[Achilles Tang]

Please don't buy fishes that you don't know what they feed on... it is a needless death and not responsible reefing.

I suggest that the next mandarin you buy be first kept in a betta box and introduced to cyclopeeze or artic-pods because these are close to the natural food type they survive on.

They DO NOT eat pellets.

Do a little research first next time, yeah?

[the oracle]

I will do more research cos i go to any lfs, they always say easy to rear and jus feed them this and that but end up the fish dont eat anything. I dont blame the lfs cos they doing business mah but i guess personal knowledge is very important.