My new trained female Mandarin called Little Girl
Ahhh Mandarin Fish, the fish that captured my heart the moment I saw them in the LFS. With its gentle quiet manner, just minding its own business, the swirls of red blue and green being surprisingly good camouflage. No one can deny its beauty, and its this that makes it one of the most sought after fish in the trade. But as nearly everyone knows they come with a whole heap of baggage. They are difficult to feed in our tanks and are considered fussy eaters. A newbie to the salty side couldn't keep one of those in her tank, never mind try and bred them. I took that as a person challenge and over the months developed the Dragonets Den.
I didn't believe that a fish would CHOOSE to starve its self, and set about learning all I could about these stunning fish. I soon discovered that these fish are very methodical feeders and will look at their food for ages before they will have a go, by which time the clowns or some other faster fish will have it off them. I developed many different variations of the Den, until I settled on what it looks like to day
My male, called Big Boy in one of the early version of the Den.
Working with acrylic has it ups and downs, the downs namely being if you haven't yet discovered solvent weld you tend to use super glue with serious consequences. This is an extract off a friend of mine's blog
"I was gluing some acrylic together (don’t ask LOOOONG story) with super glue, the top was obviously in my mouth. I finish what I am gluing, and go to put the cap on the glue before it dry’s out. I COMPLETELY miss the cap and squirt super glue on my lips. In my BLIND panic I spit out the top, and RUB my lips together. As I am doing this my mind is saying "this is wrong, maybe not such a hot idea to be doing this, maybe I should send the lips the signal to stop doing this" YOU THINK.
My mind then goes into damage control - "WET IT" it screams. I rush and DUNK my hole head in the sink which is full of plates soaking from last nights dinner. As I come up for breath with bits of spaghetti in my hair and up my nose, my lips are now firmly stuck together (super glue sets even quicker under water I have discovered).
Again my mind panics "pull them apart" its screaming over and over again. So my body, been the well disciplined thing it is, OBEYS
Needless to say I now have RAW lips and now have to talk with out moving them, which of course husband and kids think is SOOOOO funny"
My mind then goes into damage control - "WET IT" it screams. I rush and DUNK my hole head in the sink which is full of plates soaking from last nights dinner. As I come up for breath with bits of spaghetti in my hair and up my nose, my lips are now firmly stuck together (super glue sets even quicker under water I have discovered).
Again my mind panics "pull them apart" its screaming over and over again. So my body, been the well disciplined thing it is, OBEYS
Needless to say I now have RAW lips and now have to talk with out moving them, which of course husband and kids think is SOOOOO funny"
This was not the only issues I had with super glue, I went to school to pick up Ryan with toilet paper glued to my lip, and my fingers on more then one occasion.
Still I kept on going and eventually I had a product that worked for me, I had two healthy mandarins that were eat paste!! But the question was did it work for a whole new fish? So I bought a spotted mandarin.
Another extract off my friends blog, that I wrote explaining my process to her
"I have decided my husband needs a medal for living with me. You recall last weekend I walked around the house yelling "I AM A GENIUS" every couple of minutes - the proceeded to glue my lips together, well it gets worse. HOW I hear you ask. Well he caught me making dead shrimp type food, for the fish, dance. NOW before you jump to conclusions I must explain. I have in the last 6 months become OBSESSED with a species of fish that are really difficult to keep in captivity, they are really pick eaters and generally die in our tanks. Well I am not going to have that, so have made a station to feed them from (the GENIUS incident last weekend) To prove I can do this and the last 4 were not just luck, I got my self a little spotted mandarin on Sunday and have been training him all week. I wont bore you with details, but he is at the stage now where I need him to realise that the dead food in the feeding station is good food - hence I was making it jump and swirl around. Now that in its self sounds harmless, but picture the scene, I am sat in my office, with my nose pressed against a tank, I have a tube running from my mouth into the feeding station and every now and then I give a bit of a puff. Chris walks in, stares at me for about a minute and bless him yells to the kids "mommy is feeding the fish" My kids take this as normal behaviour for their mother and carry on as normal..."
My Little Spotted Getting Trained.
Once fish are well fed thier thoughts obviously stray to SEX baby! And my pair were no different. Very soon I saw Little Girl swell up.
My Pair in a classic Mandarin Fish Dance
I had eggs! 14 hours later I had eggs with tails as the eggs hatched into prolarve. Two days later you can see what fish they will grow up to be.
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Obviously with Mandarin babies feeding is an issue. My attempts at culturing A.Tonsa at the moment have resulted in epic failures. I have put it down to feeding concentrated paste instead of live algae, and have now started a live phytoTonsa
In the mean time I have to feed the babies rotifers which as you can see are far to big for the fish.
At the moment I am able to get them to day 6, which is a direct result of not having the correct food. I am experimenting with culturing at higher temperatures.
