Mandarin seems to be getting thinner

[Talon33]

I have my green mandarin for about a month now. She will eat frozen brine and mysis. I initially added her to the fuge which was loaded with bigger isopods, she about ate all of them so then I added her to the DT. DT is 125 gallons with 125 lbs of rock. The DT does not have the isopods but has copepods. The light is just a led strip light and does allow the growth of algae. Also I wonder if its too dark for her to see these tiny pods. She does not pick at rocks really. I know there are pods in there I see them on the glass. My question is should I added her to her own small system so I can just target feed her or should I upgrade lights or will she just start to pack on some weight and I should just give her time. Love this fish and I trained her to eat frozen so I really do not want to get rid of her

 

[theplantman]

you could try buying pods on line and refurbish the population in your fuge and tank. What else is in the tank that might be competing for food?

 

[Talon33]

I have
2 clowns
2 chromis
Yellow tang
Kole tang
Engineer goby
Royal gramma
Flame angel

 

[reefer gladness]

Your mandarin is not going to be able to compete with all those fish for the frozen food. Mandy's like to study there food for awhile before eating it and the fast moving fish will just eat all the frozen food before the mandy even gets a chance.

Your fuge is there to provide a safe habitat for pods to reproduce. By putting the mandy in there you probably fed it well for a short time but decimated the pod population. You need to re-establish your pods by restocking, the more diversity the better. I got several varieties of pods including some really big amphipods from reefcleaners.org (I think they hitchhiked in with a 1 penny macro) that are a great source of food.

 

[Talon33]

Yeah I know he can't compete with those fish but I really don't want frozen to be his staple diet either. He always manages a few pieces of shrimp per feeding. I added him to the fuge first because he was very skinny and I wanted her to be able to eat up a bunch without going through to much effort to find them and served as great place to train it to eat frozen. Didn't want to put a skinny mandarin in an established tank with aggressive tangs haha but however I agree my population needs to be replenished buut what I'm wondering is should I encourage the growth of algae. I thought since I didn't want corals yet I don't want light that will produce algae but seems pods and algae go pretty good together. Basically I know I need more pods, who doesn't but I was wondering if the lights make a big difference when it comes to pods and Mandy's hunting them down.

 

[reefer gladness]

You want to encourage macro algae growth in your fuge so you don't have nuisance algae in the DT. The macros also provide a food source and habitat for pods.

You can keep lights low in your DT but I would be running enough light in the fuge to encourage macro growth.

Unless the tank is cycling I don't see any reason to have reduced lighting and if the tank is still cycling new fish shouldn't be added to the system. If you have problems with nuisance algae in the display tank its a nutrient import/export issue not lighting. That comes down to either over feeding or insufficient filtration - or both.

 

[Talon33]

I have lights on my fuge and have chaeto in my fuge, I feed once to twice a day. I have coralline all over fuge. Here the thing I do not use rodi what so I had a diatom bloom that lasted forever then my coralline seemed to out compete the diatoms. But my tank is 8 months old and fully stocked as far as I'm concerned. I am ordering y skimmer finally next week, been doing 20%wc every 5 days to keep nitrates somewhat down which in turned fueled the diatoms. After looking at my fuge I say do I really want my DT looking like that. Tap tested for 5 ppm nitrates so ill never have zero trates. So anyways are you thinking I should upgrade lights. I planned on doing a little DIY 4 bulb t8 fixture which would only cost like a hundred dollars

 

[theplantman]

I would spend 150 and get an RO/DI unit first. Your tap may only test at 5ppm for nitrates, but there are phosphates, metals, chlorines, fluorides, and lord knows what else in tap water (that's just city water) wells can be better or worse depending on the quality of your aquifer and region you live in. (Example, our well water is very high in sulfur) You currently are not removing these solids and they potentially will build up in your live rock. You could be looking at a disaster down the road.

 

[jsgarrido]

hi plantman, how long do you think this takes? cuz i been using tap water with prime reef conditioner since i setup my tank almost a year ago.all my fish are looking great and my corals are thriving.

 

[theplantman]

Unfortunately I don't think there is a timeframe. If you were to go through posts on sites, you will find time and again where people have sudden algae explosions or a tank crash or their phosphate levels can no longer be brought down and a lot of times one of the contributing factors is from not using a good water source to begin with. I am sure there are people out there that have managed to keep a tank healthy (depends on what they stock with) but I would put money on it that more than half of the people that have tried reefing with tap water have had issues and regretted not starting with RO/DI to begin with.

 

[reefer gladness]

hi plantman, how long do you think this takes? cuz i been using tap water with prime reef conditioner since i setup my tank almost a year ago.all my fish are looking great and my corals are thriving.

We're always going to recommend that everyone should use nothing but RO/DI water 100% of the time. One person's success is absolutely no indication for the next person, our local water supplies vary way too much for any such comparisons.

Using RO/DI eliminates the source water as being a culprit for any other problems the tank may have. Any water quality issue at all while using tap water and the first advice given will be to use RO/DI water.

 

[jsgarrido]

you guys are right i will try to buy an RO/Di for my tank sorry to hi jack your thread talon33 LOL but when my tank was 6 month old i bought a manderin and it didnt eat any of my pods or anything it just die allway . this is the only fish that dose not do good in my tank dont know why ?? i bought another and in a week it died ...

 

[ohiojeff]

curse the water conditioners! I hate it. They claim to make tap water safe, and they don't. RODI systems seem expensive to someone starting out so they get sucked in and then have trouble. naturally the LFS that is all about making money too often is more than happy to feed into the whole game and the ones that suffer are the noobs and their poor animals... you have invested in a reef. you already have a lot of money in it. spend some more and get an RODI system. they have come way down in price and are really a small investment.

 

[Bearjohnson]

All good advice! The thing is, their are sooo many things that can go wrong along the way over time. One of the keys to long term success is to eliminate as many variables that you can within your control so when you're thrown a curve ball down the road, you can eliminate all of the variables that you are in direct control of. This helps the narrowing down process as time goes by.

Does that make sense?

 

[Talon33]

I agree I need a rodi unit and will look into one but as far as Mandy goes, I should leave her in DT and replenish pods, is that general vote, shouldn't try to put in small system and target feed?

 

[Akshay]

This is a bit out of context...but how did you train the mandarin to eat frozen? My setup is large enough & my mandarin has plenty of live food to go, but I'd surely love to teach it to eat frozen aswell! Tips please

 

[Oxylebius]

I agree I need a rodi unit and will look into one but as far as Mandy goes, I should leave her in DT and replenish pods, is that general vote, shouldn't try to put in small system and target feed?

Well, thinking in the long-term, I would keep her in the DT, replenish pods, and target feed. Paulb has a great way he target feeds his manderins and scooter blenny, and he has a large pod population as well (do a search for paulb). If you put the Mandy in a small system, you are gonna have to target feed anyway, smaller systems are really difficult to keep a large enough pod population in.

 

[Kremlin]

i have a mandy in my 28 cube. i target feed him and he eats like a PIG. i feed him arctipods, bloodworms, and nutramar ova. i just brought him home and i fed him different foods and it turned out that he loved bloodworms.

 

[Talon33]

I trained mine by having munnid isopods, loads of them in fuge and feeding brine and mysis, shrimps were About the same size and they would get caught in the chaeto and look just like them, once you fool them a couple of times that's all you need