I found one of my mandarins dead this morning. Great Christmas present. I've had this male mandarin for about 2.5 years and he was very beefy. He'd been eating frozen food as well for the last 1.5 yrs or so. By the time I took him out of the tank, my shrimp and crabs had eaten a bit of him already so it's tough to tell if he had any markings. He'd been active and eating every day so lack of food was not an issue.
My female mandarin doesn't show any sign of disease and is very active as well. She's definitely gained some weight since I got her so I'm not concerned about the pod population of my system. I 've never seen any of my other fish harass my mandarins so I was very surprised by the male's death. I think most people that lose mandarins have only had them for a few months or were in a system that was too small but that's not the case here. Has anyone else experienced a random death of a healthy mandarin? Ideas of what may have caused it?
My female mandarin doesn't show any sign of disease and is very active as well. She's definitely gained some weight since I got her so I'm not concerned about the pod population of my system. I 've never seen any of my other fish harass my mandarins so I was very surprised by the male's death. I think most people that lose mandarins have only had them for a few months or were in a system that was too small but that's not the case here. Has anyone else experienced a random death of a healthy mandarin? Ideas of what may have caused it?
