Mandarin Dragonet – Care Of The Exquisite Mandarin Fish
The Mandarin Dragonet (Synchiropus Splendidus) are one of the most breathtaking fishes found in the hobby. It almost looks like a painting with its blue, orange and green lines and patches all across its body. Even though not being a authentic goby, the name “mandarin goby” seems to have stuck with this fish. A more correct name for it is the mandarin dragonet.
The mandarin dragonet is heavily collected from the Indo-Pacific. Even though its familiar appearance at marine pet stores all over the world, it has an extremely bad survival rate in our aquariums. I will address this problem later in the article.
They are a exceedingly unaggressive fish. They can be aggressive towards members of the same genus such as its close cousin, the psychedelic dragonet. Obtaining a pair of mandarin’s isn’t too hard, look for a mandarin with an extended first spine (a male) and look for one without (a female) and put them together.
These fishes can reach lengths of up to 4 inches. A 30 gallon aquarium has enough space for a single specimen, only if they’re accepting prepared foods. Getting them to eat prepared foods is a real challenge. This is because they only feed on live copepods. Therefore, the authentic minimum sized aquarium for them is a 75 gallon that has been well established and is full of copepods. This way, you’d never have to feed them. They will live off available copepod populations without wiping them out.
If you don’t have a aquarium that big but are still eager on a mandarin fish then you need to teach it to eat prepared foods.You’ll need live fully developed artemia to pull off this job. They are receptive to live brine shrimp so getting them to eat it is a task that will take care of itself. Next, you’re going to mix in some frozen brine shrimp with the live ones during feeding. Once they start taking frozen artemia the undertaking is half done. Since brine shrimp is nutritionally poor, we need to get to feed on something like mysis shrimp or krill.
As before, mix in some mysis shrimp with the frozen artemia. Once they start taking mysis you’ve pretty much settled the problem. Offer them some krill and a good pellet after that.
That is just one problem out of the way. They are extremely slow eaters. Every single one of their tank mates will eat twice as fast as a mandarin. There are three ways to work out this problem. You could feed a lot more, in so doing ensuring several food will be left for the mandarin and in the process, foul up your tank. Alternatively, you can use a pipette to spot feed your mandarin dragonet.
The and the are a number of hubpages that the author has produced over the months. As such, Gabriela DeSouyez has a number of other articles on the topic of saltwater aquariums and the frequent fishes within the industry.
