Breeding Mandarin Dragonets

[paul b]

That is definately the mating dance and your mandarins are very healthy as that is what mandarins are supposed to do but will only do it when they are in the best condition they can be in.  It all comes down to food and pellets won't do it.

[YHSublime]

Very cool!

[OcalaReefGirl]

That is awesome! Hope you can collect and try to raise some babies!

[Enkay]

Thank you Paul for the compliment. I don't feed any of my fish pellets. Well, only if I am out of Black worms, daphnia, brine shrimp or baby brine shrimp and of course lots of pods.

 

All my freshwater fish spawn in the community tank as well. I have had rainbows, plecos, cpds and the like spawn in the community planted tank often.

 

I am going to have to wait to get some eggs and raise babies. Late march is when this project will hopefully get going full steam.

 

That is definately the mating dance and your mandarins are very healthy as that is what mandarins are supposed to do but will only do it when they are in the best condition they can be in.  It all comes down to food and pellets won't do it.

[paul b]

They are not easy to collect but they are not that hard to raise if you have them spawn in a separate tank.  Almost all my fish spawn but in a 100 gallon tank there ain't no way to collect the fry.

[Enkay]

I have a 20 gal cycling and will watch the behavior and probably move the pair there so i can get the eggs properly. with the kind of overflows i have, with weirs running across the back of the tank, I don't think there is any possibility for me to collect the eggs unless I catch them in the act of laying them.

 

From what I have read, they tend to spawn at "dusk" which is about 8:30 pm in my tank as the lights dim down. I will have to sit there every night watching for an hour to see if they spawn to collect eggs.

[dave w]

I don't mean to be a wet blanket, but if only two people have raised the babies then chances are that you won't be able to grow them on rotifers.  Everybody tries rotifers and very few fish recognize rotifers as food.  So almost all the fish that have been bred sucessfully were done so because they took rotifers.  Martin Moe is one of the grandfathers of this hobby and once remarked that "given a choice between eating rotifers and starvation, most fish will choose starvation".  

 

Congrats on the spawning, that's the first 5% I'm sorry to say.  If you seriously want to grow mandarins, try a diet that is mostly copepod nauplii for the first stage of their life until they are large enough to eat rotifers.  But even then, pods have a movement that makes fish pounce and rotifers do not.  Start now in getting yourself familiar with phyto culture so you can become familiar with copepod culture.  This is harder than raising the fry.  

 

Again, I apologize for telling you that larviculture is hard, that's why few people are successful with things that don't recognize rotifers.  But you can do it and there are a lot of people who would like to help you.  MOFIB isn't very active lately, most people have moved over to MBI (Marine Breeding Iniative or something like that).  

 

A good source to start with is Florida Aqua Farms.  They have some PVC racks that will hold enough 2 liter cola bottles for phyto culture to grow copepods or enrich rotifers.  Also, as far as I'm concerned, their founder Frank Hoff wrote the bible on larviculture called plankton culture manual.  It is very informative.

 

Good luck and let us know how we can help you.

[dave w]

Also, there is a guy in MInnesota or Wisconsin (one of those middle states) that makes batches of something he calls a 'larval fish snagger'.  It has a gentle water flow, skims off the surface and used a dim light to attract new hatch fish during the night.  I don't remember what they cost, but they have a reputation for being well made.  There a bunch of posts on MOFIB about it.

[Enkay]

Dave, thank you for your comments and information. As I stated early on in this thread, this is a project which I am trying without any great expectations. I strongly believe that unless you try, you will never gain knowledge or experience no matter how much you read. First hand experience is always the best.

 

So, its not a huge big deal for me if I dont succeed but it would be really cool if I do. 

 

I have cultured green water for daphnia cultures and have probably bred 50 different species of fresh water fish in my lifetime. Also, I dont believe that only two people have successfully raised mandarins. There probably are others, we just dont know about them because they did not publish any information on the internet.

 

So, we will see what happens in the coming days/weeks/months.

[JR-Tanked150]

Well no matter what it will be difficult, but at least you are going to try. Good luck and keep everyone posted.

[paul b]

Dave, you may be correct as although my mandarins spawn frequently, I have never collected the fry to try to raise them.  Martin Moe and I started in this hobby at the same time and I raised salt water fish the same year he did in about 1972.  Mine were blue devils and I raised them on rotifers.  I think mandarins are smaller and they may not eqat rotifers, I just don't know and I never tried to collect the fry which would be a nightmare.  My clown gobies spawn almost once a week and forget those fry.  But at least they lay eggs on coral so you can see them and I would imagine, if I wanted to I could break off that branch of coral with the eggs on it and try to raise them.  It is just so time consuming.

Clown gobi through my antique microscope.

Edited February 21, 2014 by paul b

[Enkay]

In case anyone would like to read. A very nice article on the topic.

 

http://en.microcosmaquariumexplorer.com/wiki/Breeding_the_Green_Mandarin

[paul b]

Very nice article, Thank you

[dave w]

Enkay, I'm not trying to discoiurage you from trying to culture them, I'm just trying (in my own little way) to start you thinking of a more sophisticated setup and copepods as food instead of rotifers.  There is nothing wrong with rotifers for the few fish that will eat them.  But every fish in the ocean starts out by eating copepods and I'd hope you can consider them in a more advanced setup than the rotifer setup.

 

They are not that much harder if you have done some research and go to the effort of the more complex setup.  Otherwise, just start with rotifers.  They may work for you and at least you'll have fun messing around and learning.  

[dave w]

Paul b, in that case you had almost a fifteen year head start on my own humble fishkeeping efforts.  Plus, I got in and out of the hobby a lot.  Every time my tank melted down I got out of the hobby for a few years to get my courage back up.  

 

Your time frame for 1972 is probably also accurate for when several outfits started producing clownfish in the Keys including the group that had Martin Moe, Frank Hoff and Tom Frakes (the guy who started Instant Ocean).  If my memory is correct (and it often is not!) those early grandfathers of the hobby got their start doing research jobs from the Florida State Biology departments on gamefish like pompano during the mid 1960's.  In other words, when I was about 4 years old and just starting to walk and talk.  

[paul b]

Dave the reason no one is in the hobby longer than about 42 years is because in 1971 the first fish started to be imported into the US.  Before that, you had to collect your own fish but the hobby was already going ion at that time in Germany.  I just happen to get home from the Army at that time and wanted to re start my hobby that up intil that time was freshwater as everyone else was doing.

Martin Moe was breeding fish in 1972 as was I.  He probably was also raising them as that was his profession.  I did not as there were no rotifers or anything for sale commercially then.

This is one of my male blue devils over his nest of eggs circa 1972.  Blue devils, dominoe's and sargent majors were the first fish imported.

 

 

Edited February 22, 2014 by paul b

[Enkay]

Dave,

 

I do realize that rotifers might not work. And pods might be the best way to go. The biggest challenges that people have had which I have read about is getting the larvae to survive the first few days/weeks until they are large enough to eat bbs size food.

 

I am sure I will have to experiment a whole lot and it will take some time to figure out the best conditions and foods to hopefully raise the young.

 

Thanks for all the comments and information you are sharing. It certainly gets me thinking in all the directions in which I might have to go.

[Scott_LM]

Enkay,

 

Something to keep in mind when breeding marine fish vs freshwater fish is the larval stage(s).  Size for marine larval stage is significantly smaller than freshwater in most cases.  If you don't have Joyce Wilkerson's book called "Clownfish ..."  I highly suggest you find a copy.  It does focus on clownfish, but the techniques explained will help you along the way.  

 

Good luck!

[OcalaReefGirl]

This is from what I have read and do not know first hand. I read this in "The Complete Illustrated Breeders's Guide To Marine Aquarium Fishes" a wonderful book that was very instructive.

 

First: pelagic spawners generally "lay" their eggs over the course of the spawing season. A small amount of egg and sperm is released every night. So it is best to have some sort of egg collected or top skimming device to maximize the amount of "eggs" you get . They have a "yolk" sack so they float. Smaller species produce a hundred to a few hundred eggs each night. For this reason they are usually kept in 50-100 gallon drums. (however yours seem very happy!) 

 

Second: the pods. Everything I have read is that mandarin larvae only eat copepod naupli (babies) during the first few weeks. They have to be strained from the main copepod tank and feed. Unfortunately that is all I know. There are breeding forums you can read about peoples successes. Keep us updated on any success you have! 

[Enkay]

Thank you Scott and OcalaReefGirl. I have read both the books you mentioned cover to cover. I have pretty much digested a lot of reading material as I have done before I have tried to breed any species. Now, I think it is time to get some actual experience as that is the ultimate teacher. 

 

As for the tiny larvae, there are species of freshwater fish which also have very tiny offspring. Bubllenesters like gouramis and bettas and scatterers like tetras to name a few. Rainbowfish also have extremely tiny hatchlings which you have to feed either micron sized dry food (bad survival rate) or paramecium. I will have to figure out what the best thing for Mandarin offspings is only by trying different ways to keep them alive. 

 

Thanks again!

[dave w]

Enkay, 

 

A lot of people have tried ciliates and paramecium but have not had much success.  Euplotes at around 40 microns in size is a common football shaped ciliate that can be found in rotifer cultures after they crash.  Tintinnid ciliates are also being tried by some.  But in my opinion copepod nauplii are a better bet because you can still get them as small as 50 microns in size which is almost as small as ciliates.  And the amounts of fat available in pods is much higher than in ciliates as a general rule.  

 

The problem is in getting copepod naups that are active in the water column during daylight hours so your larval fish can eat them.  Netting pods out of your tank isn't really the answer because your pump and skimmer tend to kill off the free swimming (calanoid) copepods, leaving only the types of pods that stay attached to surfaces (benthic).  Even those benthic pods may have a free swimming stage in their life in which the pump and skimmer will tend to take them out.  So you really need to grow pods in a separate container.  All pods eat phyto, some also eat inert foods like yeast and tomato juice.  Growing enough  phyto is always the tricky part.  Most who grow phyto culture nannochloropsis, but this is the crabgrass of the algae world, not nutritious enough to grow many successive generations of most copepods.  They'll do fine for brine shrimp or rotifers, but you need higher quality algaes mixed with nanno or separate from nanno to grow pods well.

 

Keep up the experimenting and learning.

[paul b]

Next spawning