The Puffer Forum

AFAIK they spawn quite regularly. You'll have lots of chances...

Yes, they have started up again now. I will move myself in front of their tank in a few minutes, and stay there until they are finished for this evening.

I sat down in front of the tank tonight, and watching my mandarins for two hours without any break. That was really a huge test of my patience. And of course they found out they didn't want to give me any eggs tonight. They probably will start up again after I've gone to bed, as Klementine is still very full of eggs. I did get pics though. And a few videos. It's 02:30 am, so I think I will wait with the pics until tomorrow.

They spawned at dusk every night, in the Philippines.

Video and pics from yesterday's events:

Video: the quality is lousy. And don't look at the algae. It's bad, but the video makes it look even worse than it is.


My clowns suddenly found out that they should defend their rhodactises. They weren't very aggressive, but they nudged at the mandarins if they got too close.














Klementine is really fat with eggs now.

i love these fish! congrats and hopefully you can(im sure you will) catch some eggs and start your spawning! i want at least one of these fish. i have always loved them since i started really looking into SW tanks. i just knew that i shouldnt get one incase it was WC and i couldnt get it to eat frozen. i did have a scooter blenny(in the mandarin family) and he was quite the character. he would often show off his top display fin and kind of shake his body at me when i was near the tank. very awesome fish!

I've made up my mind that I will wait with breeding them until after Christmas. I can't start something like this, when I will be going on a vacation for two weeks, leaving the little ones behind. The mandarins are still spawning though. I hope I can get them starting again when I've been on vacation. I have got plenty of information on breeding them now, and if I wait, I will be much better prepared. For I WILL try to breed them. If I succeed, it will be my biggest joy as a fish keeper. And besides this, one of my peppermint shrimps is carrying eggs as well. I will try breeding them too after Christmas. If the shrimp is carrying eggs now, it will do it later too. The clue is producing the right food. And I will use the same food for both mandarin larvae and peppermint shrimp larvae. I am so looking forward to trying all this. This is surely something I will learn really a lot from. I think maybe my parents have an old microscope in their attic, and I hope I can borrow it. I will need it when I start breeding. There is also one more thing that is good with waiting until after Christmas. The man who bred my two mandarins (he has also bred peppermint shrimps) live only an hour of driving from my parent's. I have the chance to visit him when I'm on vacation, to get information from him, and also to get some of the stuff I need to start up producing the food I need to produce. I have ordered some stuff I need now, all though I really can't afford it. I can afford it even less after Christmas, so it had to be now. I will keep you updated when things are starting up again after my vacation.

After hours and hours of patience, I finally was rewarded with mandarin eggs yesterday. This has been a real test of patience. The mandarins have danced beautifully several nights a week for a long time, but as soon as the lights has gone off, they just have stopped there and them. Especially the male has been the difficult part. I've seen the female desperately looking for the male in the dark many times, but he seems to instantly have gone to bed, each and every time. I don't know how many hours I've spent in front of the tank, waiting for them to spawn, but it's many! But yesterday I finally caught them in the right moment, and they spawned half a minute before the lights went off. Why don't my mandarins ever listen to what's written about how they are supposed to behave? I knew I would see a spawning yesterday, because they danced with an intensity I haven't seen before. It was beautiful, just beautiful! There is no fish that dance as beautifully as mandarins! The eggs are really, really hard to see. They are tiny and totally colorless. You really need to know what you're looking for. Today I can't see a single one in the container I have put them in, and that's not because there are no eggs there. I have absolutely no idea how I will know if the eggs are fertile or not. I have no way of seeing if they have even hatched. I will just have to start feeding the tank at about the right time, and hope that there will be some larvae there that grows enough to be seen in a short while. I am prepared to have to have several tries before I succeed, but I will succeed in the end. Woohoo! I have mandarin eggs!

congrats! i hope one day i can experience this, i dont wish to completely breed them but it would be awesome to see a pair and the way they interact with eachother during their mating and even not mating. i remember reading a thread somewhere, it wasnt here but the link might have been posted here, but the guy was breeding and raising them. the thread had everything from breeding the food to breeding the fish. he had macro shots of babies and they look so strange when they first hatch and are visible lol

And here are the eggs.