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Originally Posted by asylumdown
Question to all you experienced folk out there - if you were me, would you continue with this rather labour intensive QT protocol hoping that suddenly he'd start eating live food, or would you look in to one of the human euthanasia techniques for sick fish?
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No. Some Mandarins are tough to wean, don't give up yet. You haven't tried nearly long enough. You've only had him 3 days? You have another 3 weeks at least.
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Originally Posted by asylumdown
I'm also now treating with prazipro
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That's a bad idea at this point - Praziquantel can, and usually does, cause temporary anorexia during treatment. This is certainly not helping your cause.
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if he goes in to display only to die of starvation in a week, I'm not sure if I'm doing him, or the rest of my fish any favours
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Exactly. Think with your brain, not with your heart. There is no way in **** I would be adding an inactive, apparently unhealthy fish to my display tank. That is backwards thinking... "He's not doing good in quarantine, so I'm going to put him in the display." Mandarins do JUST FINE in quarantine tanks PROVIDED you take the time and effort, which is significant, to train them onto frozen foods.
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From my reading it looks like death by starvation [...] takes months for these fish
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Yes. Keep going. If you're doing everything right, and assuming you started with a fish that was fat at the LFS, in my experience, he WILL begin to eat.
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It would be one thing if it simply wouldn't accept frozen food, as I am capable of working with that, but not eating anything at all, even if it's exactly what it would be hunting in the wild, live and right in front of it's face, seems to me like there's very little hope for it.
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I've had Mandarins do this, and they still began to eat frozen food.
What I have found the secret to be is consistency. Feed him the same food (frozen, plain brine shrimp with a drop of garlic), at the same time, in the same spot, everyday. Don't screw around with different foods, don't mess with him a bunch,
and quit doing tank transfers until AFTER he's eating.