My two mandarins
 

Is this mating or fighting? The male has been in my tank for over a month and the female is new. I have uploaded a YouTube video. There is no mistaking that the female was biting the males back.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMFEfP0fnHw

Its hard to tell from the movie but it looks like they are both males. Do both fish have the spike on the front of the fin on the back? Mating happens at night they get together but never any aggression like that.

If their mating, its Broke Back Mountain style.

I think those are both males. When a pair mates they swim to the surface and join bellys and very gracefully glide back to the bottom.. Nothing aggressive like that.

Pretty sure they're fighting and you'll more than likely lose one of them. Most probably two males. This is the way they attack each other. Grabbing and holding and trying to force the other into a crevice. This was just explained to me the other day by a member who had the same thing happen.

:lol:

They like to rip competing males "spikes" right off as a show of dominance and to make them no competition in the eyes of a female.

this happens during shipping often and as a result, they can be hard to sex at the lfs.

The male is much larger than the female. If they are both the same size you may have a problem.

Fighting.

If they were mating, they dould be doing it in nearr darkness from my experience, and doing a spiral like move to the top of the tank.

Ken

Thanks for the help. It got more nasty but I managed to get the new comer out and I have a new home for him. It's a pity he was so docile, he even liked to rest on my hand....

They are fighting, and can't be kept together. You can try a social acclimation box like a recent thread descibes, but I'm pretty sure your "female" is a male. Some males take a long time to develop their dorsal spikes, and some never get spikes.

That's FIGHTING!

The mating dance of the mandarin is gracefull and peacefull! they get thummy to thummy and rise in the water column while twisting together gently.

This is just plain fighting and it's not a good sign for paring. Separate them before one kill the other. They only do the mating dance after the light are out, or with moonlight. Never ever in high light or not even under actinic. My male was like 3 times the size of the female. These are 2 males.

I conquer with the rest on fighting here is what it should look like

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rH4LWtpRU_M

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tar9so2Jvfw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LTus19Ezas

Wow I cant believe it was so hard for you to spot. When one fish has another part of a fish in its mouth like that and the spin around and bite . Umm they are fighting. I could tell within 2 secs of watching the video.

I agree with the others, looks like fighting to me as well, but I'm glad you found a good home for one :)

Not actually a very helpful post KeMo... Often times "mating" and "fighting" in the animal world are hard to tell apart as sometimes it can be violent and this person didn't know so they were doing the right thing by asking for our help.

Agreed, sometimes hard to discern and also an exceptionally useless post from KeMo.

If you found that video hard then you need glasses. Gobytron if you dont have anything nice to say dont say it at all.
My post was useless ok. And I see you had nothing at all to say. F--- Off.

Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! People!
There seems to me to be an awful lot of bickering and nastiness lately. Can't we all try to get along here. One of the reasons I like this site is because members are usually friendly and helpful. Nastiness doesn't help anything. :hippie:

Glad you got them seperated, easy mistake. Dont worry about that dud from TO .... lol he is obviously needing a mate himself.