Mandarin dragonet breeding & feeding

[Joseph_Joe]

Hi all,

I noticed my mandarin couple are sleeping together every night since 3 months. What shall I do to make them breed ? They sleep in the same hole all the time and no fish bother them.

I would also like to understand how to know if they are eating enough? They seem to only care about pods but they constantly chase pods at daylight. Are they hungry, thus underfed? I replenish pod population sometimes but those things are tiny I can't understand if there are enough or not.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Dread Pirate Dave]

I was wanting to get a mandarin for my BioCube but I fear my six line wrasse would kill it. I have a large refugium with chaeto that provides a place for pods to populate, grow and supply the tank with pods. I don't know what it takes to breed mandarins but a steady supply of pods would be a good place to start.

 

[anizato]

In the wild they mate every single night. So if you aren’t seeing that daily, you need to feed more because they are still in survival mode and not thriving yet.
I would suggest a 10gallon Apocyclops copepod culture tank and filter out about a gallon of pods a week (and if you have the space put a separate tank for Tisbe pods) Get the sieve from ReefNutrition to catch them.
Get one of those brine shrimp hatchery from brineshrimpdirect.com and the eggs also. Hatch eggs every 48 hours and feed the tank the baby brine shrimp constantly about 3 or 4 times a day.
Also add phytoplankton to your tank each night before bed, two drops should be ok with a tank that small.
You should start seeing the mating dance in a few weeks after this. (Fingers crossed)

 

[DaJMasta]

Mating will happen shortly before lights out - typically after wrasses and other pelagic spawners do, but closer or before inverts generally do. The male will chase the female around a bit beforehand, and then both will swim diagonally upwards, side by side, spawning with a momentary flip of their tails and then going down to sleep for the night.

My pair doesn't spawn every night, maybe an average of like 3 times a week (and not always), and it took them months of hanging around each other to actually start spawning.

If they're spawning regularly and your eggs are viable, they are definitely being fed well, but more generally, if they appear to be in good health, are active, and don't have any signs of a sunken underside, they are probably doing alright.

 

[Dipolyps]

Mating will happen shortly before lights out - typically after wrasses and other pelagic spawners do, but closer or before inverts generally do. The male will chase the female around a bit beforehand, and then both will swim diagonally upwards, side by side, spawning with a momentary flip of their tails and then going down to sleep for the night.

My pair doesn't spawn every night, maybe an average of like 3 times a week (and not always), and it took them months of hanging around each other to actually start spawning.

If they're spawning regularly and your eggs are viable, they are definitely being fed well, but more generally, if they appear to be in good health, are active, and don't have any signs of a sunken underside, they are probably doing alright.

Thanks for sharing

 

[Tamberav]

Mandarins usually like this stuff if you are looking to supplement

Coral Feast Ova

New coral reef food blend. Highly nutritional blend of whole organism zooplankton eggs (ova) of various species. Hatching coral food.

www.aquaculturenurseryfarms.com