The Puffer Forum

Today I have spawning behaviour from my mandarinfishes! I've been keeping a marine tank for less than half a year, and already experience this! I tried to take pics, but had to stand several feet from the tank, and zoom in with my camera. I have also trimmed the pics a lot, so the quality is really, really crappy. But I have to show them to you anyway. I love my mandarins.

First, my beautiful male, Little Mandarin:


And then the two of them, in action:

Super cute!

neat!

i remember when i first sawone of those fish and thought it had to be the prettiest fish i had ever seen! hoping to see pics of eggs and babies!

what size tank are they in?

very cool!!

are they difficult to care for? i looked them up on LiveAquaria awhile back, and it says they are. I've always been very drawn to them, but it'll be my first marine tank and that makes me nervous.

hadla wrote:i remember when i first sawone of those fish and thought it had to be the prettiest fish i had ever seen!

Ditto! I decided then and there that I wanted them one day.

are they difficult to care for? i looked them up on LiveAquaria awhile back, and it says they are. I've always been very drawn to them, but it'll be my first marine tank and that makes me nervous.

The answer is a resounding YES. (Thus why I don't have them. )

yeah, after i saw them, googled them and found out they are very delicate and hard to feed. ill probably never own one.

If you get tank bred mandarins, they are not difficult at all. At least my aren't. Both of my mandarins are tank bred, and they eat frozen food without any problem. Actually they are getting a bit fatty at the moment, and I haven't had them for long (the female I've had for less than a month). And they grow really fast! I have only a tank that is 32 G (plus 15 G sump). Before you start yelling at me for keeping the mandarins in a tank that small, I have to tell you that the reason why they supposed to be kept in big tanks, is the difficulty with making them accept anything that isn't live food. You need a big tank to be sure you have enough small life to be able to feed them over time. But with tank bred mandarins, that take frozen food willingly, you can keep them in smaller tanks. Be sure I checked that out with a Norwegian reef forum before buying one. And it was that forum that gave me that idea to buy another one, and told me where to get it too.

I haven't found any eggs today, but I really don't know what to look for. But the mandarins seems to be finished with their spawning behaviour. They are staying further appart than they have done the last days. Well, it was fun to watch them yesterday, and now I know that they can and will. They are a bit too young to be doing this already, so I guess I have a lot of time to see them do this in the time to come. It's quite OK not to have eggs, as I really don't know what to do with them. I was a bit in a state of panic before bedtime, when I was thinking about where to hatch the eggs. Marine tanks are not FW tanks, and I only know how to hatch and care for FW eggs and fry.

I got to dive in a spot in the Philippines, where they spawn regularly!

LilGreenPuffer wrote:

are they difficult to care for? i looked them up on LiveAquaria awhile back, and it says they are. I've always been very drawn to them, but it'll be my first marine tank and that makes me nervous.

The answer is a resounding YES. (Thus why I don't have them. )

bummer! i remember begging my dad to get one years ago, but my mom wanted a tang, and she won... probably for the better, haha.

Troender wrote:If you get tank bred mandarins, they are not difficult at all. At least my aren't. .... And it was that forum that gave me that idea to buy another one, and told me where to get it too.

I haven't found any eggs today, but I really don't know what to look for...

well, thats good news, at least! maybe theres hope for me yet, haha. what is the forum/where did you get your mandarins? or, if you do end up with some mandarin babies... hint hint

oh wait, i see you're in norway. @_@ eep. haha.

may have to go talk to my LFS to see if his are tank bred or not when I step up to my 55

Troender wrote:Marine tanks are not FW tanks, and I only know how to hatch and care for FW eggs and fry.

From what I have read they do spawn just after lights out and you have to collect the eggs before they get into your overflow and transfer them to a grow out tank.

Not the easiest thing to do.

xrayjeeper83 wrote:may have to go talk to my LFS to see if his are tank bred or not when I step up to my 55

let me know of the results! i'm checking out a SW specialty store today over in Southside, going to ask them as well