How to go about adding a second spotted Mandarine

[kmac]

I have a spotted mandarine in a 180gallon I think its a male. It has been in my tank for year and a half even eats brine shrimp and mysis. If i want to try and get another and hope they pair off. Can i just get a smaller one and hope or is there a better way?

 

[Gangous]

I just got a spotted mandarine and love it awesome fish I'd love to add another following this thread

 

[njudson]

You will need to buy a female mandarin. You can identify a female because it has no dorsal spine. However you wont often see them in LFSs because people for the most part want males. If you have an LFS you like I would talk to them and see if they can get you a female.

 

[MikeandNicole]

I started with a female and added a male, it took a few weeks but they paired up and are now spawning. Females are tough to find because the males are prettier with the dorsal spine/fin.

 

[LisaD]

ORA is distributing captive bred spotted mandarins, and they are sold sexed and eating frozen.

 

[Angel*Fish]

From what I hear they may or may not be eating frozen, but I'm sure they are able to sex them. That would certainly be preferable than taking them form the wild. But you do want to obtain fish such that the male is larger.

It's really simple to sex them. As mentioned the male has a spike on his dorsal fin. Don't buy a fish until you see it flash that top fin because it can be really hard to see while it's laying flat. As long as you have a male and a female they should get along just fine, but make sure that you purchase the new fish such that the male is the larger of the two.
Here's a male:

I couldn't find a good picture of a female, but there is no spine and it doesn't look exactly the same shape. Be careful as sometimes males will have that spine nipped off. You can spend a long time in the LFS waiting for a female to flash her fin.

Here were my pair - just to show you really can't tell without a good look at the fin.

 

[sslak]

Interesting...mine is a female, I knew that when I purchased her. I didn't realize they were harder to find than males.

Here's my female: as mentioned, impossible to tell without the dorsal fin raised. I'll go for a better picture tonight.

Edit: Found an older pic, here you can clearly see the fin on the female without the spine:

 

[kmac]

Wow that sounds almost to easy. I will see if i can try and catch some pics just so I can be sure.

 

[Angel*Fish]

Wow that sounds almost to easy. I will see if i can try and catch some pics just so I can be sure.

It is! And that's a really good idea because it looks different from the other species. The hardest part was funny looks from people in the store, 'why has that woman been over at the mandarin tank so long?' lol

 

[Elysia]

kmac, you don't list where you are located, but if there is a bigger store around you that sells saltwater fish and has multiple mandarins in at a time, you can usually find a female. Finding a healthy wild caught mandarin isn't the easiest thing to do, but in my experience it does help to have a nice, plump, frozen food eating male at home to help teach the new female what to do. I don't know about anyone else, but once I got my pair together they would do mating dances at night (make sure you have a dusk period for you lighting) but when the female wasn't interested, she would go after the male (and he was twice as big as her!)