Add a male mandarin dragonet to tank with female?

[steallife904]

I have a 150 gal tank with 1 female mandarin. She has been in the tank for almost 2 years. for about 10 months of her life there was a male in the tank with her. I bought them both at the same time (not a mated pair) and they where fine for months... The female actually out grew the male and killed him one day. She has been alone a year since. I would now like to try to add a male and want to know if it can be done? I assume I need to find a male larger than her, just want to make sure he doenst kill her.

And im 99% sure my current one is female, She is smaller than larger males I have seen before, does not have the long dorsal spike. The previous male did, just grew slower than her and I assume she was done with him

Any help/advice?

 

[snorvich]

Odds are about 5050

 

[VoiceInTheDeser]

I did it in a 40. My male was trained on Mysis, but I never got her to eat frozen reliably and she passed. The male seemed OK with her the whole time though, no outward aggression.

 

[jlogano22]

Wow never heard of a female killing a male like that


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[steallife904]

From what I have been told if the female is larger than the male she will not accept it and could kill it.... which I have seen first hand. As far as food for them I am not worried about that, just want to make sure I can add a large male and they will tolerate each other.

 

[Silly clownfish]

Disclaimer: I don't have any experience here. My 75 g could not support 2 mandarins.

Would it go better if you moved your female into a QT with the new male? Putting them both in neutral territory. I know a lot of people don't qt madarins, but I'm not thinking of disease avoidance, rather giving them a honeymoon. An acclimation box wouldn't work because the new mandarin wouldn't be able to hunt. The resident female probably wouldn't even notice him until gphe was released.

 

[ThRoewer]

From what I have been told if the female is larger than the male she will not accept it and could kill it.... which I have seen first hand. ...

This.

The male needs to be a good deal larger than the female or she will not accept him as a spawning partner.
Though females killing males because they are of equal size is new to me.
My current pair started out with male and female being nearly of equal size. When the male tried to get physical the female rejected him and when he got pushy she gave him a beating.
But he grew fast and by now, two years later, he is twice her size and they are spawning almost every night.
For the first year I had them in a 25 gallon cube tank, but now they are in my 100 gallon tank.

Adding a significantly larger male to a smaller female should normally not be an issue.

BTW, those mandarins were pretty much the first fish I added to the 25 gallon cube, less than 3 weeks after setting it up.
By now both go actively after frozen mysis, but even without feeding they find enough to be well nourished. Among the other fish in there are currently 3 other pod eating fish: a pair of bluestripe pipefish and a janssi pipefish. Though the pipefish are far better frozen mysis hunter than the mandarins or even the other fish.

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[steallife904]

i believe the male was trying to go after her and she wasn't having it, during a fight... she ended him. My LFS has a few males that are twice her size. I will go that route and hope for the best.

The quaranteen idea could work but i don't think i would ever catch her in the tank.

 

[ThRoewer]

A trap and a good deal of patience worked for me.

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