Any tricks to get a Manderin to eat anything?
 

I have a pair of Manderins, a male, eating pellets and frozen, and a female, that is "skin and bones". She won't eat....anything. The tank has some natural food. Any thoughts on getting her to eat?

You could try several things like setting up a diner (small jar that they can fit through and eat without competition) but really it just takes time. I had a female that ate frozen but my male only ate copepods. I have tons of them so I didn't really worry but then one day I saw the male eating a large piece of frozen mysis. Both are fat and happy, for now, I would try to source some copepods to seed your tank and run a fuge with chaeto to help grow the population until the female learns to eat frozen.

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im training my scooter blenny as we speak. i heard live brine in a baster with frozen foods, slowly switching to only frozen. i cant seem to find brine eggs around here so i just use munnids and small anphipods. has been about a week now and i see her picking the odd frozen brine/pellet. idk how much shes actually eating yet tho? good luck!

Also try adding some garlic drops that you can get at the pet store on whatever you are feeing. I had a cardinal that didn't eat anything for two weeks due to my tank cycling and it did the trick to start him eating again. Garlic will stimulate the fishes appetite. Hope that it helps.
Leanne

Please try to arrange to have another reefer that has a tank teeming with pods take her.

Mandarins require larger mature tanks that are teeming with pods to survive. While it is true that some force themselves to eat other foods and live. the majority do not do so and perish in our tanks.

newly hatched baby brine shrimp work and are easy to hatch , but if she is as skinny as you say and your tank isnt swarming with pods there is no hope.They dont eat much in a sitting and if you get them to eat frozen your only giving them a snack so they dont eat so many pods.

Get yourself a white worms culture and give her live white worms. My mandarins love them.

At some point I treated my tank with interceptor for black bugs and that killed pretty much 95% of the pods. With 2 mandarins in the tank, they would have died without the live white worms.

black bugs??????:noidea:

Try frozen cylopeze, cyclops, caplin roe(reef caviar) or daphnia. Most people make the mistake of trying to feed frozen foods that aren't the right size for mandarins. Stuff like mysis are no where near the size of pods, their natural food source.

if you want to bring her to my house i can give you a frag of something for her, she will do well in my tank......thats if it seems like shes not gonna make it, if shes skin and bones now its prob to late for training.