mandarin eggs

[Luis A M]

Matt´s great saga made me try again mandarins.This time I got a young couple (4cmTL),believing young fish will be easier to take new foods,and if they live and grow hope for breeding next year.
Sure enough,they were soon taking lots of live adult bs and looked healthy and happy in the 10 gal tank they share with a pair of patagonian seahorse.
I recently saw some obvious spawning foreplay.Fish met at the surface side by side,with bodies at 45º,so as to get their vents closer and the male´s anal fin bent towards the female,which was noticeably plump bellied.
At night I found some 50 eggs:

They are round,similar to Centropyge eggs but larger,at 800 microns, and lacking the oil vacuole typical of pelagic eggs.
None developed.May be the pair is too young,or the tank too small.

 

[mwp]

WOW, freakin' cool Luis! Congrats!

With my average of a 1% hatch rate, the next batch of 50 you should get one to hatch out at 12-16 hours Good luck!

Matt

 

[SueQ]

That is REALLY cool Luis!!!

 

[Luis A M]

Thanks
Mandarin is the first and only pelagic spawner raised at a hobbyist level,perhaps due to their larger eggs.So it is a good starter species in that group.Main drawback was that mandarins proved hard to keep alive,unless in a reef tank with many kg of LR per fish providing the needed pods.
But now the method shown by Matt in his thread sounds much better.Instead of a huge tank,fish are confined to a small volume container,where they can be weaned to commercial food.
In this experience,young fish fed exclusively on adult live bs so far,grow healthy and spawn.Anyway I expect to have them accepting a more varied fare in the future.

 

[mwp]

Luis, I'm curious, are you using the "10" as a weaning container or did you keep them in a small breeder net like I did?

From my experiences, I think the ultra-small container like the breeder net, combined with an overabundance of food makes it easy for the fish to spend all day "thinking" about a food item; afterall, the biggest thing I've noticed in Mandarins is how much time they spend "considering" whether to eat something or not. The other advantage of keeping them in this relatively "empty" container makes it easy to clean out uneaten food AND observe how much food is being eaten.

Sounds like your's are doing well on live brine, so the first switch Luis is to start with frozen brine at the same time as a little live brine...they'll pick it up pretty quick and start taking the frozen brine. Here in the US, frozen brine can be bought enriched with a variety of things like Omega 3's or Spirulina - not sure if that's available in Argentina. You could also try cyclopeze which pretty much mimics the natural food source, it just isn't alive. Remember, as soon as they start taking the frozen brine ween them off the live stuff!

Mysis shrimp takes a lot longer to accept, I think primarily due to its larger size, but once they start taking mysis they start packing on the weight substantially.

Matt

 

[Luis A M]

Matt,I put them in a 10 g with the idea of keeping a close eye on the weaning process.Probably the breeding net method should work better.I placed a piece of LR and some Caulerpa bunches at the far end,to make them feel safer and cozy.I guess that was a mistake ,as the fish never left the rock cover and couldn´t be tempted to take live tubifex,which must be dropped before the fish face,in the few seconds they keep wiggling in SW.
Anyway the fish started to take bbs and slowly started to come out at lunch time,and then they took adult bs.
I´m not such a big fan of frozen CE.Neither mandarins,nor seahorse nor larval shrimp take them.
Frozen bs is not available here,despite this country exports bs eggs.I could always freeze some for teaching purposes.

 

[mwp]

Luis, thinking about what you described, it seems that when I tried to ween the fish in a netbreeder with live rock rubble or macroalgae in the net with the fish, they tended to overlook food and food got stuck underneath the rubble...basically the "structure" that provided comfort was a disservice to the weaning process.

So currently your Mandarins are taking live brine Nauplii and live adult brine. If enriched frozen brine isn't available, I really have to suggest giving the cyclopeze another shot; ALL my fish love it. Also, if you could get ahold of the Arctipods from Reed (assuming they've "fixed" the bouancy issue) that'd probably be a really good non-live food source as well. What about frozen Mysis?

I guess we should both keep in mind that Malev has his mandarins eating Pellets (Formula 1 and 2). I've seen my Red Scooter Blenny try the FROZEN Formula 1 but not the pellet form yet....can't say any of my 3 mandarins have tried pellets or frozen forumula-type foods.

What else is available Argentina that might be worth trying?

Matt

 

[GreshamH]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8016296#post8016296 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by mwp
(assuming they've "fixed" the bouancy issue)
Matt

Only way to do that, is remove the oils, but then, you have a nutritionally void husk.

 

[mwp]

AHA Gresham, so the Arctipod floating thing it turned out to be the critters themselves causing the problems with them floating? They'd be phenomenal mandarin food, but I haven't been able to train my mandarins to take food off the surface!

OK, to be fair not ALL of them float, and they are a great food that my fish LOVE and they're VERY easy to feed!

Matt

 

[mwp]

Any new luck lately with the Mandarins Luis?

Matt

 

[Luis A M]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8104352#post8104352 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by mwp
Any new luck lately with the Mandarins Luis?Matt

No,haven´t seen eggs though I didn´t searched every night.
I keep giving CE and mysis,whole and grated,and F1,but they keep ignoring them.
Being "arctipods"pods from the arctic,are they also FW pods,cyclopoids as CE?.Are they very different to CE?.Aren´t they red?.
Check these frozen pods under the scope,it´s amazing how well they are kept,you expect them to start hopping! You can see their eggs (also red).I once asked the CE people if they could pack live eggs,like bs,it could prove a revolution in live foods!.
They didn´t even reply
There are also Far East producers of cheap frozen FW cyclopids.

 

[mwp]

So Luis, if they're not eating Cyclopeze or Mysis, what ARE they eating? Only live brine?

Matt

 

[Luis A M]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8105695#post8105695 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by mwp
So Luis, if they're not eating Cyclopeze or Mysis, what ARE they eating? Only live brine?

Matt

Yup.And in good shape they are!