Helping my mandarin dragonet

[squash110]

I have had a mandarin dragnet for about 6months now, but he has suddenly become very skinny. I have a 75 gallon tank that has a few soft corals, about 45 pounds of live rock, and a 20 gallon sump. In my sump I have a marine algae that freely floats around. Would it be bad for my tank if I let some of this algae to float around in the main tank? It seems that lots of copapods are swarming in this algae and I was just wondering if it would help my tank to introduce some of this algea for a while?

 

[chadmace]

What other fish do you have?

 

[Damsel13]

In my humble opinion maybe the mandarin d should have a vacation in the sump?

 

[Sparks]

wanna pack on the pounds & transfer him to eating frozen...start with frozen hikari blood worms. just let it defrost and let the worms fall to the bottom. with a little luck, he slurp them up like spaghetti noodle right away. let it defrost with a smidgeon of frozen cyclopese if nutrition is what you're worried about. Obviously this is not a long term fix, but he will get fat from it, and IF he eats the worms, he'll transfer to whatever else easily.

don't knock it til you try it, it's how i got 2 mandarins to eat ANY FROZEN FOOD in a 40gallon with about 15 lbs of live rock, where I'd just drop in a frozen cube of brine or whatever and the 2 mandarins would swim up to the cube and start picking away. And this was when there was a larger perc and a much larger Eblili angel in there as well. Imagine that scenario, when people tell you "they're picky eaters" (btw it was a larger striped female with a smaller pschyodelic male too).

 

[moortim]

I saved a scooter dragonet by moving it to the sump for a while and working on feeding frozen foods.
How old is your setup?

 

[Jan]

the moving to the sump and training to eat frozen foods sounds like a good plan.