Why so many fish problems

[Paul B]

It seems to me that there are so many posts asking how to care for a particular fish "after" it was bought. Copperbands and mandarins seem to be at the top of the list for advice, and both of those fish are not hard to care for but they do require just a little different methods to feed than something like a clown fish which will eat cardboard and still spawn. These fish should be fed what they were designed to eat and not "taught" to eat something you may have hanging around the house. Mandarins eat pods or any small "live" creature. Some will eat pellets or frozen food but that is not their diet and they will probably not live to their normal life span which is "probably" close to ten years or more. Copperbands live well over 10 years' but in the sea they eat worms as I have spent time with them underwater and that snout was designed to pull worms out of rocks. I always use live blackworms but earthworms are also fine if small enough. Frozen bloodworms are also fine if they are real "bloodworms" and not insect larvae that are often called bloodworms. Copperbands will also eat clams and clams are one of the best foods for them. Almost none of them will eat pellets or flakes and those foods should not be fed to anything in my opinion but especially copperbands and mandarins. Many people feed a mandarin frozen food and if it eats it, they feel that is a good thing. Well, it may be good for you, but that fish needs to eat every few seconds as it can not store that frozen food and it will just get pushed through a short tube that is has for a digestive system. It gets little nutrition from that as that is not how it was designed to eat. Mandarins are a very easy, disease resistant, little maintenance fish if they are put in the correct "mature" large enough tank that is not to sterile and is loaded with self replicating pods. If you have to add pods from a store, your mandarin will starve unless there are pods reproducing on their own. I have been keeping both mandarins and copperbands since the 70s and have no problems with either of them. If your mandarin is living on frozen food, it is also catching pods on it's own. An easy food to feed a mandarin is new born brine shrimp that should be offered every day in a feeder so the food stays near the bottom where that fish eats. This is all just my opinion of course.
Copperband and mandarins eating new born brine shrimp from a feeder.

Pregnant mandarin

 

[Humblefish]

I've kept a mated pair of mandarins for a few years now, but a Copperband has been my "Achilles heel". I've lost 3 in a row in QT now. The first succumbed to velvet, while the other two simply starved to death. Last one did actually eat for a week or so, but then abruptly stopped. I've tried live blackworms, baby brine, clams, you name it. I've been told specimens from Australia have a higher likelihood of survival, but that also means forking out $100-200 vs what the Indonesian/Singapore specimens cost. Might be worth it if I could actually find an Australian specimen somewhere. :squigglemouth:

 

[Marshall O]

Paul - I believe most of the problem is the fish you mentioned are bought to eradicate pests (pods & aiptasia). All of the pests are quickly consumed, and then the hobbyist tries to only feed the normal foods fed to every other fish. There is no effort to provide what they normally eat, and so they end up starving. I have found the LFS near me are getting better at educating hobbyists on certain fish and their needs, but still not where it needs to be.

 

[Paul B]

It's a shame people still buy copperbands just to eat aiptasia when a copperband is one of the nicest looking and peaceful aquarium fish there is. They were always one of my favorites and I almost always had one. If they do eat aiptasia, they will eat them all in a couple of days but copperbands are large eaters and won't live on just that.
I will say that healthy copperbands are
not easy to
find. I wrote an article about tem here http://www.saltwatersmarts.com/keeping-difficult-marine-fish-3898/

 

[TJ's Reef]

Paul, absolutely agree and you hit it on the head in your first sentence "asking how to care for a particular fish 'after' it was bought". I am still very concerned with our hobbyist these days in that particular practice, with all the needed/required info available to us at a whim over the internet and most often within hand (Smart Phone) why is there still so many uneducated impulse buys with livestock. Buying an unneeded or unnecessary piece of equipment is one thing but............... STOP buying live animals then asking/searching for its ID and then how to take care of it... PLEASE !!!

Being a Long Time Reefkeeper (nearly as long as the OP Paul B) the Holidays has been one of my most troubled seasons of the year being a member of several groups/forums because of all the impulsively bought livestock or even new hobbyists just getting their feet wet with elaborate setups or fully stocked re-homed systems before any thought or study was put forth. We've all heard or read this multiple times "Nothing good come quickly in this hobby" yet this time of year there seems to be a Gluttony of threads/posts on most all Forums/Blogs/FB Groups on this subject matter.

I am most certainly not 'without fault' here as have made many mistakes over the past three plus decades that cost lives within my systems. But..... when I was in the 'early learning stages' I/we had to actually purchase a book or go to the library for most of required knowledge. Today it is literally at our fingertips hours and hours each and every day.... when my sons are around I can hardly finish a sentence (long winded as they may be) on something of interest without one of them having already 'Googled' it and showing me some silly or shocking video of said subject. So......... when or how does one decide to not do this when buying a live animal to stick in a lil glass box ???

Just my $0.06 as usual

Cheers, Todd

 

[Paul B]

Todd, I am also guilty of it. Just this morning I almost bought an Emu, but knew little about it so got a duck billed platypus instead because I know they eat worms. I am real good at feeding worms anyway.
This hobby is not that hard, If it was, I, with my high school education would not be in it. People make it difficult and it seems people are more interested in worrying about their phosphates than feeding an animal what it is supposed to eat. I was in my favorite LFS yesterday which prompted me to write this post. He told me that they may not bring in anymore copperbands because people complain that they die to quickly. That is disgusting. Copperbands are a beautiful fish that are not rare at all and a treasure to have in any tank and not that difficult to keep. I can see if you wanted to keep a manta ray but copperbands are fairly easy if you feed them correctly and not try to train them to eat Cheerios or cheesburgers.
I just don't get it. Learn about the animal from someone who keeps one or twenty and has been doing it for a long time, not a guy who started his tank last Tuesday about 2 or 2:15 in the afternoon. I mean really!

 

[GHill762]

mmm.. cheeseburgers....

good thread as always Paul

 

[fagundespavinp3]

Im looking In to getting a mandarin (have been researching and contemplating for about yr now but tank is not ready yet IMO) what is the RIGHT sized tank to house one or 2 of them to be able to let them thrive

 

[Paul B]

There is no magic number of gallons of water you need to keep a mandarin. If you built a fish feeder as I designed and filled it every day with new born brine shrimp you could keep 2 mandarins in one gallon of water, but you and me know that is not going to happen so you should get the largest tank you can. Mandarins eat and little else except new born brine. I would use gravel instead of sand and feed the "Pods". I feed my pods pellets, not the mandarins, the pods. Mandarins do not like a sterile tank that is vacuumed all the time. As a matter of fact, they hate that. I wrote this that may help you, if not I wrote along post on here someplace about mandarins as I have been keeping them since they were invented sometimes in the 70s
Keeping ?Difficult? Marine Fish

 

[EZMAC114]

I 100% agree with you...I always see post about people buying and then asking questions about how to care for a fish or what type of fish it actually is lol. I have only been in the hobby for just over a year and in the beginning I made some bad mistakes but after that I made sure to research everything I can even if it's not a fish that I plan on buying. I just enjoy learning everything I can about fish and this hobby. I personally think it's good practice to research and read about what fish you want and reread the info multiple times. I bookmark specific pages on my phone and reread them at time. I also really enjoy learning and memorizing the scientific names of all of the fish that I currently have.

 

[Paul B]

I also really enjoy learning and memorizing the scientific names of all of the fish that I currently have.

That's a good practice,I memorize the names of Supermodels but I have trouble wit fish names.

 

[SantaMonicaHelp]

mmm.. cheeseburgers....

good thread as always Paul

That's just what I was thinking. We can't even get their own nutrition right... We have a hard time staying dedicated to exercise (some of us)...

 

[Reikigirl]

Research, research, research

I am very new to the saltwater world but the first thing my LFS taught me is to not just buy a fish because I like the way it looks. I learned very quickly to look it up and learn about it before buying. For example, I have a beautiful blue starfish. I then saw a bonded pair of harlequin shrimp and completely fell in love with them. I looked them up on my phone to see if they would mesh with the fish I now have and learned that they only eat starfish! I nearly fell over in the floor! I would have been devistated if I would have bought them and they slowly killed my starfish. This is why I only have 5 fish so far as well as 3 corals. It may be slow going, but I want everything in my tank to like happily together.

 

[fagundespavinp3]

PS Paul B always Enjoy Reading anything you post always very Helpful

 

[EZMAC114]

PS Paul B always Enjoy Reading anything you post always very Helpful

Agree

 

[Paul B]

Reikigirl, those harlequin shrimp would have absolutely loved that starfish.

Thanks fagundespavinp3

 

[Kyuss414]

I got 99 problems but a fish ain't one.

I'll show myself the door. :bolt:

 

[Reikigirl]

Funny man

Yes but it would break my heart! I would love to have a pair of Mandarin's but am afraid to until I figure out how to get them fed properly. I cannot stand the thought of something dying because I made a poor, uneducated decision.

P.S. I enjoy your posts too :angel:

Reikigirl, those harlequin shrimp would have absolutely loved that starfish.

Thanks fagundespavinp3