Trying to save a dragonet

[reefbroao]

So I know most people would say I'm crazy for buying a Dragonet in a fairly new tank (its done cycling and has copeopods) but please listen to my circumstances.

today I was out to get some damsels in order to make my little 10 gallon a bit brighter and I noticed this LFS (not my normal store) had some 6 lines and mandarins which I haven't seen many places with recently. Now this shop wasn't super well kept, I noticed they had a 6 line that was withing hours from death and another poor guy who was in a tank with 2 clowns that were antagonizing him pretty badly. They had 3-4 mandarins all in different tanks and only one of them looked healthy. The others were quite lethargic (not moving at all) and that's not characteristic of these guys. This one little guy about an inch long was hunting and I debated for a while what I should do. They are absolutely gorgeous fish, I wanted to stock them in my 40g when its ready and I just felt so bad that they were left in this condition.

Either way I decided id give it a try knowing that he would probably have died there and at least I could try my best for him. He's been acclimated and is honestly super active now, half of me expected for things to go wrong but he's already been hunting and eating even some brine shrimp I put in there (freeze dried because they were smaller).

I just want to see what I can do to improve his chances with me. I was planning on buying the copeopod packs to stock up the population in the tank because he's eating all the time as I knew he would.

[stingeragent]

Well , at this point you only have 2 choices. Return him, or try and keep him alive. In the future I would shy away from not doing a QT on a fish. Is just bad practice. I'd try and get him to eat as much frozen as possible. Depending on what you have, try a few different things and see what he will eat. Getting a large pod population going though will be your best bet depending on how the frozen goes.

Edit: I personally wouldn't even try the mandy in a 40B that you have coming, but that's just me. There is always exceptions though. Hopefully it works out for you and the fish.

[MizTanks]

Try some Nutramar Ova, live Black Worms and newly hatched baby brine shrimp. There's a new hatchery on the market that hangs on the tank and as the babies hatch they float out into the tank. Good luck with the lil bugger, I wish you both the best [emoji2]
http://www.yourfishstuff.com/hatch-feed?feed=Froogle&gclid=CjwKEAiApYGyBRC-g_jIstuduV8SJABCEzhZKoOV-9Mr1S3jyRCB1q-FR6ydXVKyMbFSh1eoAeQC1BoCJjDw_wcB

[seamonster124]

Sorry for your loss

[CStrickland]

You might be able to get the pods cheaper online, about $40 for 1,000 plus overnight shipping. Here's some math to help you budget Posted 03/03/2012 at 09:44 AM by Sk8r
there are 86400 seconds in 24 hours...and given 12 hours of dark when it is not eating (it actually eats before the lights come on...that is 43200 seconds of daylight, divided by 5 (every five seconds)---meaning that a mandy eats about 8640 pods a day, or 720 an hour. Two thousand pods, if fed to it in the required concentration, will be eaten in less than 3 hours.
From this thread which has more info http://166.78.194.232/forums/showthread.php?t=2446049
Good luck. They can take several months to starve, so that's when you will be out of the woods (of course you will need to keep buying the pods because you don't have the means to sustain a population of them in your tank).

[reefbroao]

Well seems like ill be giving him to my regular LFS that I know will actually take care of him. I guess it's good I got him away from that shop.

I realized real quickly by watching him. It's unreal how much the little guy eats, it's non-stop.

[e048]

I'd return him or try and find someone with a much larger and older tank for him

Only dragonets I've been able to keep are scooters and my fuge is teeming with life

[iluvmyfishes]

If he is eating freeze dried brine shrimp then you can try to keep him. I kept a pair of manderins in my 45g seahorse tank with no problem when they ate frozen mysis.

[shifty51008]

Mysis is alot more healthy that brine shrimp though. I doubt it would survive on just brine shrimp

[CStrickland]

Well seems like ill be giving him to my regular LFS that I know will actually take care of him. I guess it's good I got him away from that shop.

I realized real quickly by watching him. It's unreal how much the little guy eats, it's non-stop.

:thumbsup:

[MondoBongo]

Try some Nutramar Ova, live Black Worms and newly hatched baby brine shrimp. There's a new hatchery on the market that hangs on the tank and as the babies hatch they float out into the tank. Good luck with the lil bugger, I wish you both the best [emoji2]
http://www.yourfishstuff.com/hatch-feed?feed=Froogle&gclid=CjwKEAiApYGyBRC-g_jIstuduV8SJABCEzhZKoOV-9Mr1S3jyRCB1q-FR6ydXVKyMbFSh1eoAeQC1BoCJjDw_wcB

this, plus live white worms. if you can't find nutramar ova (and i doubt you will be able to, if you can let me know!) you can try other kinds of roe (fish eggs). soaking things in selcon can also help entice a feeding response.

check out the PaulB style feeders, pod condos, and think about a fuge.

http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2113800&highlight=feeding+station

you can use the feeding station to dispense worms and freshly hatched brine at a slow rate all day, it works better with how dragonets feed, and helps to alleviate some of the work load of multiple feedings a day.

it's always hard walking by tanks and seeing these guys starving. i've had to stop myself many times from attempting rescues.

it's a good sign that she's feeding and alert, so now just feed her as much as possible. long term is potentially a different story. with the right tank configuration it *could* be done, but your margin of error would be razor thin. see how the short goes, and then make the decision as to whether or not you feel confident maintaining that level of husbandry long term. there is a certain special kind of feeling that comes from turning around the fortunes of a fish in rough shape.

[reefbroao]

He's picky he'll pick up the mysis and spit it out but sometimes will eat it. I know I'd definitely want them in the future, if anything it helped me feel more confident with my water peramiters but I can now see how they would decimate a population of copes.

I don't think that they had really "trained" him to eat the dry foods. He would only get them on accident until I stood there for hours dropping individual mysis in his face. This morning I dropped some more and he was sucking them up but couldn't handle the bigger pieces.

The white spots are from my mushroom who got upset when he got close and spit out some stuff that's hanging on his back. I got super concerned that it was ich but it has the white mucus membrane on it

[Deftones2015]

My issue with rescuing anything from a pet store or fish store is, it feeds the cycle. If I go rescue a tang today that pet store will just order more. So in reality I may be saving that one tang yet putting how many others in its place. I do wish you the best with your new mandarin though!

[reefbroao]

That is true, I was thinking about that.

[joshbrookkate]

Good discussion

[reefbroao]

I called the place to see if they even do returns and OF COURSE they don't. It's sad that those places deal with these kinds of fish. But my regular lfs is gonna buy him from me and they're top rated in the area

[CStrickland]

Well, there's always Yelp.
When I was new I got steered away from a couple ich factories by a quick Google search. Idk if they'd change their business model from it, but others would have a heads up at least.
It's a pity with the Mandy's cause they die so slow people don't trace it back to the fact that they never shouldve gotten it in the first place. They think they did something wrong and just keep replacing them (and buying pod packs). For a shady store, that's a golden ticket :(

[reefbroao]

Yeah they had iffy reviews with some people saying they had changed their ways but clearly not. They had a poor Christmas wrasse stuck under a rock, come on now. Hoping I can scoop up a coral or something for him though.

[AUFishGuy]

you know you could always just cultivate copepods in a few 5 gallon buckets or even 5 gallon tanks and make one of Paul Bs brine hatcheries. Cultivating the pods is super easy and if you had 3 populations going it would be plenty for the mandy. You would need to buy pods for a bit while your populations got big but its doable. Just an idea

[CStrickland]

A lot of things *can* be done. Frankly I see a lot more posts about how great pod farms ought to work than I see folks posting pics of long-term successful mandarin keeping using them. Idk whether that's cause it is harder than it looks or just boring and not worth the effort. Either way, old spawning Mandy's like Paul has are the exception in this hobby for a reason. They are beautiful, special fish with unique needs.

I'm not saying nobody should have one, but it's a stupid and expensive project to take on when the tanks barely cycled. I think op make the right choice deciding to rehome it. I'm really impressed b/c some people are awfully stubborn about it. Down the road, when they are ready for a new challenge and feel like raising buckets full of planktovores, Mandy's will still be for sale. The first year of a reef tank is a challenge few of us come to the hobby prepared for. It doesn't need complicating.

[reefbroao]

True I'd love one in the future but I think I'd get an Ora mandi and make sure my tank is stocked/ ready for one

[CStrickland]

Yeah. I'm stocking with Ora/tank raised as much as possible. At least that way when I screw up and kill fish I only have to feel guilt for that one fish, and not a whole species that I'm depleting.
When you try to trade him in, really talk up how he eats fd shrimp. That's worth a lot.

[AUFishGuy]

True I'd love one in the future but I think I'd get an Ora mandi and make sure my tank is stocked/ ready for one

Fair enough, probably the best decision but in the future you will probably need to still cultivate pods if he will be kept in a 40 gallon. I feel that way about anything less than a 100 gallon tank. Just my opinion.

[Reef Frog]

I've always believed that it's the surface area (footprint) of an aquarium & refugium that determines if an aquarium has the capacity to support the quantity of copepods needed to keep a dragonette well fed.

Larger quantities of water don't necessarily matter since the copepods live their lives on the substrate, not in the water column. Thoughts?

[MondoBongo]

I've always believed that it's the surface area (footprint) of an aquarium & refugium that determines if an aquarium has the capacity to support the quantity of copepods needed to keep a dragonette well fed.

Larger quantities of water don't necessarily matter since the copepods live their lives on the substrate, not in the water column. Thoughts?

i tend to agree with this. larger footprint, more sand, more surface area for them to live and feed.

i would easily take a tank with 1/2 the vertical height, and less over all water volume but a larger foot print, over a smaller footprint with more water volume.

my dragons will hunt on the glass, but far and away spend the majority of their time on the sand and rocks.

[AUFishGuy]

I've always believed that it's the surface area (footprint) of an aquarium & refugium that determines if an aquarium has the capacity to support the quantity of copepods needed to keep a dragonette well fed.

Larger quantities of water don't necessarily matter since the copepods live their lives on the substrate, not in the water column. Thoughts?

You are correct but aquarium size which we all talk about in gallons as you said obviously dictates the amount of live rock and substrate that can be in the system. I said 100 gallons or larger as a generalization as most tanks over 100 gallons are 6 foot tanks. The larger the aquarium the more surface area for organisms. In the example above unless he has that 40 gallon packed with rock or a a large refugium, like another 40 gallon that is only a refugium, then a mandarin will wipe out a population pretty quickly.

I have a 90 gallon with a good bit of rock but my refugium is quite small. I am cultivating pods right now in preperations for a Mandarin or pair of mandarins that i will be getting in the next 2-4 months. even with a 90 gallon with lots of rock i am pretty confident that without cultivating i would not be able to sustain a suitable copepod population in the DT.

As for the refugium. I have seen folks with refugiums that have great pod populations, I mean packed with pods but I am skeptacle of how many actually get sucked up into the DT, especially refugiums that are part of the sump system. I mean its obvious that it is not a large percentage of fuge pods being constantly pushed into the DT or the refugium would not be able to have so many pods in it all the time. Maybe a different story for those with large seperate refugiums that are plumbed back into the return section of the sump or even the DT but this is all just my opinion.

[reefbroao]

brought HER in it was a female lol