Mandarin Dance
 

Id just finished water changes on the discus tanks and settled into my beanbag for a little fish watching before the lights went out. Just before, i noticed my pair of Mandarins chasing after each other, the male flaring and displaying next to the female on the sand bed.

The lights went out with just the room light for illumination. I spent the next hour watching the male and female flare and display, chasing and spinning around each other in the sand, every so often clamping together side by side to do a long slow corkscrew circle up from the sand almost to the surface. Every now and then I could make out a small white "globule" float away in the current.

The little female has been absolutly bulging the last couple days, but i never expected to see this.

My camera sucks for motion shots, but hopefully i can nab a few pictures of this event the next time im fortunate enough to see it.

Happy as Hell :mrgreen:

Wow. Has anyone bred mandarins in captivity before? Will you try to breed them in their own tank or something?

Keep us updated on this Josh!!
Time to clear the FW out and start a SW breeding op. :mrgreen:

quite common to see this when you have a pair of mandarins. Really cool to watch. Not sure if they've successfully bred in aquaria though....

reply
 

Captive bread manderines! There's a money maker. :mrgreen:

They must have been watching your angles and got some ideas :razz: :mrgreen:

All the angel pairs left 2 weeks ago so they must be improvising :mrgreen:

I looked into raising them last night...but the logistics look like a killer. Couple people raised spawns but they're saying growout takes 1 year to reach 1"...i dont even wanna think of all the pods and bbs 50 baby mandarins would go through in a year :eek:

Muck, haha Tina's been buggin me to save some of the occelaris spawns and give them a shot...ive got about 500 gallons of tanks from 20g up to 140g sitting empty...maybe in the fall...would still like to get out and do some camping and fishing out west this year.

www.sjwilson.net/reef she has a spawning pair in her 120 gallon reef tank i would definatly check it out for more info.

If the Waikiki Aquarium can't do them, I doubt the odds are good. :biggrin: