Mandarin Dragonet dying

[Jekyl]

I have a 90g with a mandarin and have never seen her eat anything but pods. Hundreds a day as all she does is hunt and sleep.

 

[Tonycass12]

What I’m planning on doing is dosing my tank of pods every week after my water changes to overpopulate my tank of them so that once I do decide to take on a Captive bread Mando (this time) I will know that there is plenty of food for him and I can reassure myself by feeding him mysis or pellets.

Unless you have a very lage tank or a sump/refugium for the pods to live and reproduce without the pressure from predators they will get wiped out pretty quickly. But that's the benefit of going captive bread with this species, they readily take pellets as a food source just make sure you get the extra small TDO pellets that they are already used to consuming.

Cheers! Best of luck in the future with your studies. I had big dreams when I was younger to get into marine bio but ended up going into the trades with the cost of schooling going through the roof.

 

[benmed]

This thread makes me so sad and angry Poor mandarin. It seems like you didn't know how to properly care for it, regarding its dietary needs. So yes, there was something you could have done. You could have provided it with the correct dietary needs, before it starved to the point of liver damage.

Posts like yours make me sad and angry. This kind of response hurts the community as a whole by discouraging people from posting their failures for fear of the type of aggressive, verbal response you offer. Your post is a disservice to the community. Difficult cases or outright failures provide the best learning opportunity for all of us, which allows all of us to be better, more responsible care takers of the living things we care for. Clearly the OP was trying to help and that is why he reached out to the community. You should be ashamed of your response.

 

[Nate Chalk]

I did know how to feed the fish, I spent months on end researching about mandos before I purchased the fish. Like I said previously, I only have so much time to spend with the tank.

Expert care""

 

[rmorris_14]

Posts like yours make me sad and angry. This kind of response hurts the community as a whole by discouraging people from posting their failures for fear of the type of aggressive, verbal response you offer. Your post is a disservice to the community. Difficult cases or outright failures provide the best learning opportunity for all of us, which allows all of us to be better, more responsible care takers of the living things we care for. Clearly the OP was trying to help and that is why he reached out to the community. You should be ashamed of your response.

fair enough.. I'll take that. I went back and forth about posting it. It wasnt until the OP appeared to shrug off the death as though he didn't intend on learning anything from the process "saying there was nothing they could do" that I felt the need to say something. None of his original posts said anything about learning from this or all the research he did prior to until after I said something... However, I'll take your criticism that it was poorly written and try to be more gentle next time.

Edit to add: For the record, "You should be ashamed of your response" was a little much.

 

[Nate Chalk]

fair enough.. I'll take that. I went back and forth about posting it. It wasnt until the OP appeared to shrug off the death as though he didn't intend on learning anything from the process "saying there was nothing they could do" that I felt the need to say something. None of his original posts said anything about learning from this or all the research he did prior to until after I said something... However, I'll take your criticism that it was poorly written and try to be more gentle next time.

Edit to add: For the record, "You should be ashamed of your response" was a little much.

I researched for months and ignored expert care

To be fair i did the same with a leopard wrasse and dragonet early on in my reefing days. Havent bought one sense and now I mind care tips

 

[stevolough]

Thank you for understanding, I’m still learning and I hope to educate myself further once I go to college and major in Marine Bio.

If your not going to be around because of school and a busy schedule you should plan a head. Who’s helping you with your tank when your away? Only add things to your tank that are easy to take care of. I get it. I love my tank. But like other types of pets it can limit you. Sometimes you have to sacrifice until your life settles down. And please, go live life!

 

[Crustaceon]

What I’m planning on doing is dosing my tank of pods every week after my water changes to overpopulate my tank of them so that once I do decide to take on a Captive bread Mando (this time) I will know that there is plenty of food for him and I can reassure myself by feeding him mysis or pellets.

Good plan with the pods because that dragonet will decimate the pod population between reseeding. You essentially need to go above and beyond the natural sustainable pod population with a small tank simply because the dragonet will scour every inch of the pod's habitat before it has a successfully reproduce and repopulate itself. This is why people say get a big tank if you want to keep a dragonet. Also, I've never had a dragonet eat pellets. It's going to always be live food or in very rare instances, whole frozen brine, mysis or cyclops (no luck with "arctic pods" for me).

 

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

Ok, I understand that I accidentally starved both of those fish but the thing that I'm not getting is how they would starve even though there was plenty of food. I might have not put in as many pods as I should have but the goby was eating at a buffet but ended up dying before the Dragonet. Also, I have a close to 3" ORA Sunrise Dottyback and it only eats one piece of shrimp a day and is still living, what's up with that? I have one more question, could all of this stuff potentially kill the rest of my fish, or should I not worry about anything and start to feed them more throughout the day?

Mandarins are really tough to feed.
It all boils down to food calories consumed versus energy expended. If the dottyback doesn’t have a sunken belly then it is getting enough food.
Jay

 

[benmed]

fair enough.. I'll take that. I went back and forth about posting it. It wasnt until the OP appeared to shrug off the death as though he didn't intend on learning anything from the process "saying there was nothing they could do" that I felt the need to say something. None of his original posts said anything about learning from this or all the research he did prior to until after I said something... However, I'll take your criticism that it was poorly written and try to be more gentle next time.

Edit to add: For the record, "You should be ashamed of your response" was a little much.

Agreed about ashamed but I was following your lead.

 

[benmed]

Agreed about ashamed but I was following your lead.

 

[rmorris_14]

Agreed about ashamed but I was following your lead.

Sure, we will leave it at that.

 

[((FORDTECH))]

I did know how to feed the fish, I spent months on end researching about mandos before I purchased the fish. Like I said previously, I only have so much time to spend with the tank.

Next time if there is one try frozen brine shrimp and frozen baby brine shrimp

 

[((FORDTECH))]

What I’m planning on doing is dosing my tank of pods every week after my water changes to overpopulate my tank of them so that once I do decide to take on a Captive bread Mando (this time) I will know that there is plenty of food for him and I can reassure myself by feeding him mysis or pellets.

You will go broke doing this

 

[Crustaceon]

Breathe….fooo fooo fooo… ok…I don’t want to rip into someone today…fooo fooo fooo… this isn’t a competition and i’m not going to win anything by making people feel bad or cudgeling people until they give in so I can claim the win… fooo fooo.

 

[Hairyteeth]

If your not going to be around because of school and a busy schedule you should plan a head. Who’s helping you with your tank when your away? Only add things to your tank that are easy to take care of. I get it. I love my tank. But like other types of pets it can limit you. Sometimes you have to sacrifice until your life settles down. And please, go live life!

Yaaaas agreed, and what I was thinking as well

 

[Rmckoy]

Ok, I understand that I accidentally starved both of those fish but the thing that I'm not getting is how they would starve even though there was plenty of food. I might have not put in as many pods as I should have but the goby was eating at a buffet but ended up dying before the Dragonet. Also, I have a close to 3" ORA Sunrise Dottyback and it only eats one piece of shrimp a day and is still living, what's up with that? I have one more question, could all of this stuff potentially kill the rest of my fish, or should I not worry about anything and start to feed them more throughout the day?

Most mandarins only eat live pods .
they can be changed from live food but sadly without plenty of pods they are hard to keep

 

[IE Reefer]

You will go broke doing this

I cultivate pods in a container so that I don't need to keep buying containers of pods from my LRS

 

[SeaHorseQueen]

Unless you have a very lage tank or a sump/refugium for the pods to live and reproduce without the pressure from predators they will get wiped out pretty quickly. But that's the benefit of going captive bread with this species, they readily take pellets as a food source just make sure you get the extra small TDO pellets that they are already used to consuming.

Cheers! Best of luck in the future with your studies. I had big dreams when I was younger to get into marine bio but ended up going into the trades with the cost of schooling going through the roof.

Even with the regium with a small tank, wouldn't they still need at least weekly dosing on pods? How often can you feed the TDO pellets along with pods? I know they have digestive tracts similar to hummingbirds.

 

[EeyoreIsMySpiritAnimal]

Hi everyone,
I had a previous thread about my other fish and what it went through here and it seems that whatever disease is coming back for round two since my Mandarin Dragonet is acting the same way as the Goby did. I tried moving him around but the fish wouldn't budge much since he's so weak from not eating for so long, I know there's nothing that I can do for the fish I'm just curious about what disease my tank inhabitants may have that could potentially wipe out the rest of the inhabitants.

Here's a quick video of the fish's current state:

I'm sorry you're having these issues. Hopefully you can find some answers and have better luck moving forward