Advice on QT for Green Mandarin

[DraggingTail]

I have been wanting a Green Mandarin and now that my tank is going on 2 years old and I see lots of pods both in my display and fuge...

I will QT with .6 copper for 14 days and then feed until fat and happy for 14 until I put it in display. My QT is obviously bare bottom for copper. How do I feed in QT?

Thanks for the input!
Happy reefing.

 

[DraggingTail]

#reefsqad
Bump

 

[OrionN]

The Mandarin that you are going to buy will not do well with your planned regiment. You will find that they likely only eat pods. Getting enough Pods for them to eat will be expensive. 14 days without food in copper will most likely kill him, or else servery weaken him, stop him from eating.
Maybe your should ask the LFS order a tank raise Mandarin and put him straight into your DT.

 

[OrionN]

 

[nereefpat]

I want one for my display too, but I can't figure out a way to qt it.

The best that I can come up with is raising brine shrimp to feed while doing Tank Transfer Method with Prazi, but that wouldn't cover velvet. Buying a captive bred one from Biota is a good thought...I don't know if it's worth 100$ to me to have a mandarin though.

 

[calvertc425]

Just an FYI I have a spotted or pysadelic mandarin and they eat prepared foods readily like frozen bloodworms might be a better option I wouldn’t qt with copper but I wud qt it and put meds in food after get it eating

 

[alain Bouchard]

I have been wanting a Green Mandarin and now that my tank is going on 2 years old and I see lots of pods both in my display and fuge...

I will QT with .6 copper for 14 days and then feed until fat and happy for 14 until I put it in display. My QT is obviously bare bottom for copper. How do I feed in QT?

Thanks for the input!
Happy reefing.

Mandarin is mostly resistant to ich. They have no scale, but a special type of mucus protecting it from predators and parasite. I would not put it in copper treatment fearing it would damage its mucus protection, and would not quarantine it, as long as it looks healthy. Understand that it is not impossible for it to catch ich, but highly improbable.

 

[MERKEY]

I have been wanting a Green Mandarin and now that my tank is going on 2 years old and I see lots of pods both in my display and fuge...

I will QT with .6 copper for 14 days and then feed until fat and happy for 14 until I put it in display. My QT is obviously bare bottom for copper. How do I feed in QT?

Thanks for the input!
Happy reefing.

Hi OP, just watch the mandy in a QT for 14 days and see if any nasties arise and if not them use the TTM for ich and flukes. NO COPPER NECESSARY!! No need to copper unless velvet comes around. I know many copper no matter what but manderins are different and that's just the facts.

If you want to do copper then this is your best bet.

The fiance and I wanted manderins and we wanted pairs so this is what we did before we started using TTM.

THIS HAS WORKED FOR US BUT IT DOES NOT MEAN IT WILL WORK FOR YOU

We start all of our manderins in a separate 10g tank stocked with pods. We have a shop that we buy from weekly. We let the manderin get used to eating frozen foods with the pods until we start the Quarentine process. Once and only once the mandy is eating frozen on a regular basis...like 4-5 times DAILY! This has to happen or like Orion said the mandy will starve. You have to literally blanket the tank with food. There will be A LOT sucking out old food and little water changes to keep the tank pristine but it's worth it.

THIS TAKES TIME

This has worked 3 times now for us. We have 1 pair that is doing great in a 3 year old tank and we just got our 3rd to eat frozen like a PIG!

Its dedication and commitment and you will turn into a DRAGON SLAVE but it is worth it in the end!

 

[Reef AquaCult]

Do NOT use copper on a mandarin. I would recommend stocking a 10 or 20 gallon aquarium and heavy ghost feeding it (auto feeder) with a bright light and get lots of algae growing in it and on the glass and with that should come a big copepod boom. Start with some live rock with pods from display tank. Once you have a thriving pod tank after a couple months then you can add a smaller mandarin. Get a small one so that it needs less pods to survive / grow. QT for one month.

ive successfully QT a tiny Biota mandarin using 3cc store bought hydrogen peroxide twice daily in a 10g tank. This helps kill surface parasites such as ich and velvet. As above poster said, mandarins are thankfully highly resistant to ich. They can be carriers though. You can consider this as a possible alternative to copper. It’s not guaranteed to work but it may be better than QT without meds. It can also kill velvet. I can vouch that it won’t hurt the fish and the pods will continue to grow. The peroxide starts to kill the algae which the pods then feast on, another benefit of the peroxide.

Also would recommend daily harvest of live baby brine shrimp. My mandarin loves them. Also try to keep feeding frozen food and frozen copepods during QT. After a month or 6 weeks toss him in the display! You could also consider peroxide dip as described in “hybrid TTM” thread after QT and prior to DT introduction To blast any possible surface parasite.

 

[living_tribunal]

I have been wanting a Green Mandarin and now that my tank is going on 2 years old and I see lots of pods both in my display and fuge...

I will QT with .6 copper for 14 days and then feed until fat and happy for 14 until I put it in display. My QT is obviously bare bottom for copper. How do I feed in QT?

Thanks for the input!
Happy reefing.

I think most would advise TTM when quarantining a mandarin. I qt myself but this is one fish I probably wouldn’t put in copper. I know humblefish explains more about qting them on his site, it’s worth a glance.

For feeding, I would introduce about 700 pods a day instead of dumping the cultures in every week while in qt. Maybe add some rock so the pods don’t get decimated that instance.

Last thing, not sure what copper you’re using but maintaining a lower copper level won’t help you as it defeats it’s purpose. You’d be better off doing ttm in the case of the mandarin. If copper isn’t within a specific range, it won’t kill free swimmers.

If you’re using cupramine, .6 is on the high side of therapeutic levels. If you’re using copper safe, then you’re doing over twice the therapeutic levels.

 

[Nhltc99]

I second what Merkey suggested. Set up a observation tank to get the mandarin eating frozen/processed foods. Then once its eating, use TTM to QT the fish.

Here is what I did that worked for my mandarin's:
I set up an observation 20G tank and used a large ball of chaeto from my display tank to help with bio-filtration as well as to bring pods into the QT. Used simple HOB filter as well. It just so happened that my DT was running fallow at this time, so i had used 90 days to take my time and get the mandarins eating frozen food. You can use whatever, but I personally had success with the Hikari spirulina brine shrimp (their green packages). Mandarin's started slowly nipping at this. Then moved on to adding Ocean nutrition formula 2 (frozen) and eventually frozen mysis soaked in selcon. I would also change out the chaeto with fresh chaeto from my DT occasionally to bring more pods into the tank. By time I moved on to TTM, my mandarin's had no problem living off of frozen food for the two week TTM period before going into my display tank. Now, my mandarin's will go after chunks of frozen food in my DT even when the tangs are already feasting on it.

 

[najer]

I read this earlier and walked away, lots of good advice, please don't expose it to chemicals, the minute it stops hunting and grazing is the start of a very slow death sentence unless you get it eating preped foods, just my opinion and I have a spotted rescue in my small tank, I took one of five because the others had basically shut down already!
I hope this doesn't sound harsh, think of 5 - 10 pecks a minute and do the maths, their instinct is to graze and not be fed, worry about feeding it once you have it feeding naturally.

 

[Silly clownfish]

I have had my mandarin for about5 years, so I don’t remember all of the details, but I had her in an observation tank for about 2 weeks. I definitley didnt do my normal TTM and praziquantel regime with her. Since they are scaleless and not prone to ick, I didnt think TTM was worth the extra stress on her. The point of my qt was more to try to get her eating frozen. I put live rock rubble for my fuge in her observation tank for some pods and fed live brine daily. I also tried target feeding frozen cyclops, but my girl would not eat them. Even spit them out. The cops I could move and the freshly hatched brine did not seem quite sufficient. she seemed to be losing weight after a couple of weeks, so I d it wa a smaller risk to move her to my DT. She was much happier and has hunted non-stop since.

i recently (like a week ago) started a white worm culture. I think if I has this back then I might have been able to do a longer quarantine, and it think it is less effort than daily hatching brine. this is something you might want to look into before getting your mandarin.

I was unable to find a tank raised mandarin at the time. I honestly wish they all cost $100 so that people would really think about whether they could feed them before buying.

 

[living_tribunal]

I have had my mandarin for about5 years, so I don’t remember all of the details, but I had her in an observation tank for about 2 weeks. I definitley didnt do my normal TTM and praziquantel regime with her. Since they are scaleless and not prone to ick, I didnt think TTM was worth the extra stress on her. The point of my qt was more to try to get her eating frozen. I put live rock rubble for my fuge in her observation tank for some pods and fed live brine daily. I also tried target feeding frozen cyclops, but my girl would not eat them. Even spit them out. The cops I could move and the freshly hatched brine did not seem quite sufficient. she seemed to be losing weight after a couple of weeks, so I d it wa a smaller risk to move her to my DT. She was much happier and has hunted non-stop since.

i recently (like a week ago) started a white worm culture. I think if I has this back then I might have been able to do a longer quarantine, and it think it is less effort than daily hatching brine. this is something you might want to look into before getting your mandarin.

I was unable to find a tank raised mandarin at the time. I honestly wish they all cost $100 so that people would really think about whether they could feed them before buying.

Agreed, if I see one more post where the user is assuming “I’m just going to get them used to frozen”....

 

[Nhltc99]

Agreed, if I see one more post where the user is assuming “I’m just going to get them used to frozen”....

I had no major issues doing so. It does take time and patience though. Also not saying all mandarins will take to it. I would mostly melt the frozen food and used a turkey baster to put the frozen food right in front of the mandarin, and occasionally use the turkey baster to make the food move around instead of settle on the bottom. Now theyll come up and eat it right off the end of the turkey baster from me.

 

[living_tribunal]

I had no major issues doing so. It does take time and patience though. Also not saying all mandarins will take to it. I would mostly melt the frozen food and used a turkey baster to put the frozen food right in front of the mandarin, and occasionally use the turkey baster to make the food move around instead of settle on the bottom. Now theyll come up and eat it right off the end of the turkey baster from me.

I’m not saying you can’t have success transferring them over to frozen. I’m more or less saying that people should start with the expectation that you’re going to be feeding it a lot of pods I.e. if you have a small tank you’ll need external cultures, if you have a large tank then you just need to make sure your pop pop stays high.

From there, you can see if you get lucky getting it to eat frozen. I still think mandarins should always have access to copepods at every moment. There are too many deaths where people report they fed it frozen. I just don’t know if it’s on average a sure fire way to keep them alive.

 

[Nhltc99]

I’m not saying you can’t have success transferring them over to frozen. I’m more or less saying that people should start with the expectation that you’re going to be feeding it a lot of pods I.e. if you have a small tank you’ll need external cultures, if you have a large tank then you just need to make sure your pop pop stays high.

From there, you can see if you get lucky getting it to eat frozen. I still think mandarins should always have access to copepods at every moment. There are too many deaths where people report they fed it frozen. I just don’t know if it’s on average a sure fire way to keep them alive.

I definitely agree that people should still have a strong enough pod population to support the mandarin. Frozen food should only be a supplement for Mandarins (other than during TTM method in my case)

 

[living_tribunal]

I definitely agree that people should still have a strong enough pod population to support the mandarin. Frozen food should only be a supplement for Mandarins (other than during TTM method in my case)

That is cool you were able to transfer yours to frozen. I’ll have to write down the white worm suggestion. Seems interesting.

I’ve been prepping for a mandarin for a few months but am unsure if I can now that I have a canary wrasse and pipefish.

 

[DraggingTail]

Good information. Thanks everyone.

With all this info in mind, how do you think this would work?

I could add substrate and feed my QT under a fuge light until it is overgrown with algae and add chaeto and pods from my DT fuge. Add some acclimated black mollies until they are happy. Once I have lots of pods visible add the Mandarin.

If the Mandarin is a carrier the mollies would get sick....

This way I would know if the Mandarin is safe for the DT. I could take it back to LFS if not and treat the mollies with copper.

 

[Silly clownfish]

I personally like that plan