Target Man

how long have you had the mandarin?

1 week

He looks under-fed.

and the color looks faded

skinny mandarin :/

he's had it a week... it could have been in bad shape at the store... but yes hope you have a good population of pods reproducing (refugium) or you can get it to eat frozen/prepared foods... good luck!

Thanks guys, I thought he looked a little skinny. I started to get worried so I ordered some reefpods.

he looks like a ghost of a fish =[

Yeah unless he gets some serious nutrition (either eating nutritionally sound prepared foods, or an enormous amount of pods) he probably won't last much longer.

Also, lack of research FTL

I agree that this mandarin looks really skinny. To be honest that is what mine looked like when I got it from the fish store. I also witnessed the store feed my mandarin frozen food before I walked out of the store with him. I have had mine for about 5 weeks now and he is looking much better and I can no longer see the bones down his back. Have you seen yours eat frozen? Do you have enough pods for him? I personally would not have purchased that fish in that shape inless I saw him eat food other than pods. Just my opinion.

Bruce

He is only about 3/4 of an inch long and just a baby. Do any of you know how I can get some copepods asap? My old tank had them without buying them, and there was a lot. And the closest FS is 1 hour away from me.

You will have to train it to eat frozen ASAP. There is a lot of discussion how to do so on this site. Read this, at the end I have a few vids of how I trained mine.

http://www.nano-reef.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=161389

Thanks Stevie, I'll give it a try.

Will Freeze dried brine shrimp work?

No.

It should be frozen foods. Also, brine shrimp are the nutritional equivalent of us eating something like saltines.

Mysis is probably best, but variety is very important to include.

spirulina brine is a good choice, that's what SDt feed hers and I feed mine that, mine was eating frozen at th LFS I had it eating like a pig then she stopped, now she's eating the brine, was feeding rod's food but she didn't like it as much. Mine gets fatter by the day. Pods won't do crap, get him eating frozen or it'll die.