Help me feed!!

[Fisherjohn]

Hello everyone thankyou for your help. I love my fish and coral and need help properly feeding my animals. Iv been feeding my sixline and clown with frozen mysid shrimp but unfourtunally my mother surprized me with a couple new additions.. Im deciding wheather or not to return them for a more sutable tank. Thats why im here! A little about my tank: its been up and running for about 4 years. Its a 29 gallon with an 100g Aqua clear hang on, plus about 80-100lbs of LR. Along with a power head and great clean up crew. (About 30 nasurious snails, a peppermint shrimp, Brown urchin, and 6 blue and red legged hermits.) the water parameters are pristine as far as Ph, Alk, trite's, trate's, And am. Im investing in a mag/ calc test along with more corals later on. Now the scary part. As for fish im quite nervous that one or more of you are gunna grabb my throught threw my iphone..here it goes.. 1 false percula, 1 sixline, 1 lawnmower, and here it goes.. A mandrin. Befor you cut me up, i did buy a bottle of trigger pods and there are hundreds of small worms and crunchies for em. I love my animals and only want the best for my babies. I probably should bring my phycadellic buddy back to my local store, however before i let him go i wanted some opinions. What should i be feeding my fish? And does my tank hold up to the amount of live stock i have?

[thegrun]

The outlook for keeping a mandarin longterm in your tank is not good. First, even without the 6 line, your tank is just not going to produce enough pods for it to eat. The 6 line wrasse is going eat all the pods before the mandarin has a chance to get them, so it makes it even more difficult to keep. The tank itself should support 4-5 smaller sized fish, but not a mandarin.

[Reefmedic79]

Feeding a varied diet will benefit the fish more than just feeding mysid all the time. I change between flake, pellet and frozen foods throughout the week.

As for the mandarin, if you truly have around 100lbs of porous LR in the tank and the tank is 4 y/o then you might have a small chance of keeping him alive. Though 100lbs in a 29G tells me there isn't a lot of room in the tank. The sixline wrasse will probably out compete for food though. So I would err on returning the fish.

[tylr9m482]

Without a sump/refugium for the pods to breed, you will find yourself constantly buying bottles of pods to feed with. Might not be the best set up for the mandrin. I personally think this fish are aesthetically very pleasing therefore many people want to keep them, however they can be very difficult to care for. IMO I would bring it back.

[Fisherjohn]

Yeah i figured so. Thanks everyone. So im gunna give em back or give em to my friend with a well established 300g reef. As for the sixline should i keep him after i get the mandrin out?

[robotman]

another way to keep it is setting up your own pod setup, but besides that i wouldnt keep a mandy in a 29, i get scared some months with mine in my 55 and ive had mine for roughly 8 months now. i have 80-100 lbs plus

[bif24701]

Originally Posted by Reefmedic79

Feeding a varied diet will benefit the fish more than just feeding mysid all the time. I change between flake, pellet and frozen foods throughout the week.



As for the mandarin, if you truly have around 100lbs of porous LR in the tank and the tank is 4 y/o then you might have a small chance of keeping him alive. Though 100lbs in a 29G tells me there isn't a lot of room in the tank. The sixline wrasse will probably out compete for food though. So I would err on returning the fish.

I can not picture 100 pounds in a 29. Where would you put the water. Must be seen to believe. Take the fish back, you knew what we where going to say,

I have 100 pounds in a 120 and that much rock wouldn't fit in a 40.

[bif24701]

Originally Posted by Fisherjohn

Yeah i figured so. Thanks everyone. So im gunna give em back or give em to my friend with a well established 300g reef. As for the sixline should i keep him after i get the mandrin out?

If the six line is eating prepared food I would say yes. If not need to know if you have a sump or refugium?

[Reefer54]

80-100 lbs of LR....please post a pic. i would love to see this.

[Fisherjohn]

Okay okay relax i guessed how much rock i had my b for being off lol. And i knew what u guys were gun a say really? I though u came here to get help and not bashed making me feel ashamed. I already placed the mandrin in my friends 300g and yes the six line has no problem eating frozen foods. Ill buy a scale and acuratly weight my live rock.. Lmao. Thankyou for your time.

[bif24701]

Originally Posted by Fisherjohn

Okay okay relax i guessed how much rock i had my b for being off lol. And i knew what u guys were gun a say really? I though u came here to get help and not bashed making me feel ashamed. I already placed the mandrin in my friends 300g and yes the six line has no problem eating frozen foods. Ill buy a scale and acuratly weight my live rock.. Lmao. Thankyou for your time.

It's just some folks add information so they get the response they want to hear rather than what's good for the system/fish. I am not saying you did. It was the right thing to do for the fish. I know how it is going to the LFS. You go in to the LFS after researching many different fish you want for your system choosing what is best only to find none of them are in stock. Then rely on the folks that work there for good advice for choosing what available and getting burned when you go home and research the purchase. It's happened to me and I choose not to go back. Some stores are more interested in making a sale than making the customer/fish happy.

[Fisherjohn]

I got yah i apologize for comming off strong, my grandmother passed this morning and everything irratated me. I did the right thing by giving him to my friend who has a nice comfy 300gallon well established reef tank. I get visitor rights too im sure hll b very happy. And again thankyou for your time.

[robotman]

Originally Posted by Fisherjohn

I got yah i apologize for comming off strong, my grandmother passed this morning and everything irratated me. I did the right thing by giving him to my friend who has a nice comfy 300gallon well established reef tank. I get visitor rights too im sure hll b very happy. And again thankyou for your time.

paulb would argue with some people here that its very easy to raise mandarins just time consuming, he also states that its possible to raise in any size tank if you raise the food for it and make a easy accesibale feeder, he has mandys that spawn all the time. but i would believe its possible to keep 80-100 lbs of rock in a 29 just not much room left for water since each gallon weighs about 5 lbs.

[Paul B]

paulb would argue with some people here that its very easy to raise mandarins

Actually he would argue with everyone. He told me.

Mandarins, like most fish are easy if you feed them what they are supposed to eat. A fish such as a mandarin is supposed to eat what we would call a pod. We call everything small and alive a pod and that is fine because a mandarin will eat anything small and alive. But mandarins are different from most fish in that they don't have a real stomach and can't store food which is why it was designed to eat a "pod" every ten seconds or so. A Pod has only (I am guessing) 1/100th of a calorie, maybe less. So the fish needs to eat all the time. That does not mean to teach it to eat pellets and wish for luck. If you don't have thousands of pods and if your tank is very new or very clean or if you vacuum the sand bed and go to church to pray if you see any detritus, don't get a mandarin.
For your fish, the first thing I would do is take that flake food and feed it to your cat. Don't feed it to your fish. Get yourself some clams, live clams that you would eat, (well I eat them every week) freeze them, then shave off tissue thin slices for your fish. Alternate that with frozen Mysis and if you want your fish to spawn and live forever, and you want to be the envy of all the fish Geeks you know, feed them live blackworms at least a few times a week. Every day would be better. Don't tell anyone about the live blackworms as it is a secret, but that is all you need to know about feeding. Some of my fish are probably older than you. That is because I discovered the secret. Even your mandarin will eat them but make a feeder and hatch brine shrimp, every day.
Fish are not like you and they don't need variety. They need what they are supposed to eat, not what is easy for you to get.

[robotman]

Originally Posted by Paul B

Actually he would argue with everyone. He told me.

Mandarins, like most fish are easy if you feed them what they are supposed to eat. A fish such as a mandarin is supposed to eat what we would call a pod. We call everything small and alive a pod and that is fine because a mandarin will eat anything small and alive. But mandarins are different from most fish in that they don't have a real stomach and can't store food which is why it was designed to eat a "pod" every ten seconds or so. A Pod has only (I am guessing) 1/100th of a calorie, maybe less. So the fish needs to eat all the time. That does not mean to teach it to eat pellets and wish for luck. If you don't have thousands of pods and if your tank is very new or very clean or if you vacuum the sand bed and go to church to pray if you see any detritus, don't get a mandarin.
For your fish, the first thing I would do is take that flake food and feed it to your cat. Don't feed it to your fish. Get yourself some clams, live clams that you would eat, (well I eat them every week) freeze them, then shave off tissue thin slices for your fish. Alternate that with frozen Mysis and if you want your fish to spawn and live forever, and you want to be the envy of all the fish Geeks you know, feed them live blackworms at least a few times a week. Every day would be better. Don't tell anyone about the live blackworms as it is a secret, but that is all you need to know about feeding. Some of my fish are probably older than you. That is because I discovered the secret. Even your mandarin will eat them but make a feeder and hatch brine shrimp, every day.
Fish are not like you and they don't need variety. They need what they are supposed to eat, not what is easy for you to get.

go paul b! XD was hoping youd see the thread.