Originally Posted by
Mr.clownfish
http:///forum/post/3174128
so mines going to die?
i feed it mysis shrimp.
As long as it's well fed and happy, you "should" be fine. More and more mandarins are accepting frozen food. Years ago it was rare, it's still rare now, but not to the same extent. The ideas about what mandarins will accept as food is also starting to shift.
The thing is, many people go "Oh, my mandarin eats frozen food, he doesn't need pods." This is where people get into trouble. Then all they do is feed frozen brine which is like giving a kid nothing but candy and the mandarin becomes malnourished. The pods should be in their diet regardless, unless they absolutely refuse them (which is highly unlikely, but can happen). The other issue is, they eat all the time, so the pods need to be available all the time, not just when you feed your fish morning and/or night.
My suggestion would be to still seed your tank with copepods at least once a month, if not twice, even if the mandarin accepts other forms of food and to add vitamins to any food that is added to the tank for him to eat other than pods. This will help increase his chance of survival. My mandarin is slowly starting to accept other forms of live food like baby brine and mysis and will occasionally eat frozen food added to the tank for other fish. I still seed my tank, it's a 155G with over 200lbs of rock, plenty of pods, and I still seed. As they get bigger, they want more food. Mandarins have the metabolism of a teenage boy running a marathon, tons of pods can be depleted in under a week.
On a side note, pods are good, they'll sift your sand a little and some eat detritus, so you really want them in your tank regardless, so seed it.
