RIP Mandarin

[StripesTheEel]

Hey all,

Some of you may remember my mandarin i adopted from a friend 3-4 months ago. He was raised on frozen foods and was a great fish to watch. Won a photo contest with his photo. Well woke up this morning to see 2-3 small hermits huddled together. I took a closer look and they were finishing off their meal. The MANDARIN, im quite sad as he was a rarity being able to eat frozen foods. I would love another one but dont want to risk it, if it wont eat frozen foods. Man it sucks.

 

[Melissamustang]

OH NO I remember him!! That is so sad Matt. I am sorry for your loss. He was beautiful! Ours jumped tank a while ago and now we got another....The spotted one we have is so fat! I know how you feel. Thats a bummer.

 

[melosu58]

Sorry about that.

 

[TheRealFF]

That is sad.

 

[GinaD]

Really sorry to hear that, however a lot of people are saying that just because it's fat, doesn't mean it's not starving to death. Frozen foods just don't have the nutrition mandarins need. They need pods.

Actually, a guy at a LFS once told me that if I wasn't going to feed it live pods, to expect a 3 month lifespan. I remembered that to this day and have seen example after example of that.

 

[cmor1701d]

Sorry to hear about your loss. I would expect that you have a healthy pod population in that tank. Is that not true? Do you have a sump or an area where you could create a fuge for pod population? I threw some rubble rock in a corner of the tank and can see pods there as well as in in-sump fuge.

 

[zuzecawi]

Serious bummer. It seems like these guys really don't often live past the four month mark in captivity. I watch my spotted mandarin like a hawk, even with the huge pod pop in my tank, I worry about it because it was sooo skinny when I got it. Mine takes frozen mysis as well... but I still worry. He was rail thin when I got him (fed on nothing but mysis at the time) and he's gained weight in the past month but still looks a little sunken in right behind the gills. I think I feel almost as bad for buying it as I do for seeing it so thin at the not so LFS.
You know, to be honest... don't lose sight of the fact that sometimes fish just up and die, and we're not really sure why. I know with mandarins everybody's ready to jump on the "Not enough pods" wagon, and rightfully so, because 9 times out of 10 that is the reason, but sometimes it's not. Fish which were perfectly healthy in appearance for years can suddenly die from some unknown parasite or virus we have no real understanding of. It's one thing to wonder why a tang died when it has obvious signs of HLLE, it's something else entirely to assume that somebody's tang died of HLLE when you haven't seen their tank or really have any knowlege of their husbrandry habits. Sometimes its easy to jump to the conclusion of "newbie mistake" when in fact the hobby is still very new, very experimental, and the ocean we emulate is such a vast place of possibilities.

 

[StripesTheEel]

Yeah I can assure everything the pod thing had nothing to do with it, he lived for 8 months in a friends tank and 3 in mine. I ensured he ate every night with vitamin enriched foods. Im just assuming he was a little old and it was his time. Unfortunate, but not willing to take another mandarin risk for a long time.