Mandarinfish Questions on Quarantine?

[ddaddy]

I just picked up a nice looking mandarinfish from the fish store and it's currently in quarantine right now. He'll be going into my unstocked reef tank soon. When I say unstocked I mean there are no fish but there are plenty of live rock, corals, shrimp, etc.
Anyway, my question is how long should I keep the mandarin in quarantine before adding him to the tank? I heard that it is hard to feed a mandarin any prepared foods and it's been true for me so far because he won't touch any brine shrimp or flake food or zooplankton. I'm afraid the fish will get malnourished if I keep him away from a reef tank for too long. So should I put him in before the recommended 2 week quarantine? I've had him in copper treatment now for 3 days and he looks alright. Any comments about experience in this situation would be helpful.
Thanks,
Dave

 

[beth]

Frankly, I would not have given the fish a copper treatment wo a reason to.
If the fish will not eat, then you can always put him in the reef and then just don't add any more fish for 6-8 wks to see ensure that nothing develops.

 

[ddaddy]

I have had problems with most every fish I buy as far as some parasite especially ich. So my new philosophy is to treat them for ich before the problem worsens in a nice clean tank. Maybe I was wrong to do that but I think I'm gonna snap if I have to do another hypo or 4 week quarantine again.

 

[sistrmary]

Do you buy the fish from the same LFS? The reason I started ordering offline was because Ich was rampant at my LFS...they've pretty much taken care of it now, but if it's not in your tanks, and you keep bringing it in from their tanks, I'd have some words with the fish guys. As for the mandarin, if you shoot brine/mysis shrimp directly onto your LR, 9 times out of 10, they'll eat it. I hope your tank is mature enough for it to have plenty of food...they're typically very picky, but sometimes, you get lucky.

 

[ddaddy]

Thanks for the replies. I do have a mature tank for the mandarin and lots of copepods and live rock for him. I don't have live brine shrimp but I do soak the frozen brine in marine zoe and hopefully I'll be able to train him on eating that. I guess I got a little lucky too because the copper I used was cupramine and he seems to be doing fine. I'll put him in his new tank tonight and keep an eye on him.
Thanks again for the replies,
Dave