Catatonic Mandarin

[reqon]

I purchased a mandarin a 5 months ago and have been noticing that there will be times that it will go into a corner behind my live rock and go into like a catatonic state. It wont move at all for like 2 or 3 days then snap out of it and be fine.At fist I would freak out and think it was dead but reach in to grab it and it would swim away just fine.Sometimes even his colors fade a littel when hed oes this only to come back brighter than before.Weird! It's my Favorite fish and it took me 2 months of looking to find him...he eats brine shrimp as well as fish meal pellets readily so I figured i lucked out with him. I have a 75 gallon FOWLR that I'm converting to a reef system and I have 180LBS of live rock and a DSB and my tank has tons of pods.My water params are all Ok and when he snaps out this state he just goes about his buisness.Any ideas as to why he does this? Also just wanted to say that this is a great board and I have pretty much set my whole tank up on the great advice found here i just decided to come out of the shadows now!Thanks to all!!

 

[aarone]

Well i can explain the color part. When the lights go of in your tank all mandarins lose a little color. They are photosynthetic, not in the sense where they make food from lighti energy, but their colors on their skin will change at times. That is nothing to worry about. The only thing i can offer you for the catatonic state, is maybe he is just tired. Most mandarins spend time going through out the tank at night hunting pods, he might be more of a nocturnal mandarin than a day time hunter. He is probably just resting.
aaron