Green mandarin - Synchiropus splendidus

[jessemac]

Great pair, absolutely beautiful! I love these fishes, I have one myself and have wanted to try and get a pair. Though I am hesitant to do so as I am not sure what sex mine is. I believe a male, but not certain. Is there a way to know for sure with the Green Mandarin?

 

[tektite]

Yes, if you look at the first picture of my male you see the spike on its first dorsal fin, that's how you tell its a male. The female's is round with no spike - like this pic of my female red scooter:

It can be harder to tell the younger they are, and it may take a little patience watching them to tell

 

[jessemac]

Awesome, thanks for the info. Also, very nice looking scooter. I think they are a neat fish as well. Do you have any issues between the scooter and the Mandarin?

 

[tektite]

No, though the red scooter is still pretty small right now.

 

[N83259]

Thanks for the offer Matt! If I get a fuge I may have to take you up on that!

 

[SantaMonicaHelp]

They look so lovely together!

We only have one in our tank...

 

[tektite]

Last night I finally stayed up late enough to catch some eggs. This is the first time I've gathered them so not sure if they're fertile or not.

 

[dmatt88]

Very cool.

Sent from my DROIDX using Tapatalk

 

[tektite]

Well, all the eggs of the previous batch I collected were infertile. Just collected some more last night and a few were fertile this time. I now have 13 prolarvae These guys are so tiny!

Really wish I had a macro lens right now...

 

[Funlad3]

Wow! Did you ever get your cultures going?

This is cool!

 

[tektite]

I have a 75 gallon aquarium that is my phyto supply. The rotifers I got from a local hobbiest are propagating like crazy, at the moment the only thing I'm using them for is raising some peppermint shrimp larvae. They are L strain though, I need to get some S cultures started. Tigger pods are propagating extremely slowly, I haven't started cultures of anything else yet.

 

[Funlad3]

So in lowly non-breeder talk that I can understand )), are you able to feed them?

 

[tektite]

I'm not sure if the L strain rotifers are small enough for the mandarin larvae, I'm going to try and see if they'll eat it if I keep them alive long enough. I'm very new at this so not really sure! This tiny batch is my first proof that my mandarin pair is fertile and I am very happy about that. When I have more cultures of rotifers (getting some S soon, they're smaller than L), I will be catching more eggs and trying to raise them from there.

 

[tektite]

Finally got a little time over the holidays to collect a spawn 2 nights ago. Green mandarin larva 44hrs post spawn:

 

[Funlad3]

Okay, does anyone else think that's cool?

 

[Clownfishfan]

Awesome!

 

[dmatt88]

Haha that's very cool for sure.

Woohoo Matt has tapatalk back

 

[tektite]

72 hrs post spawn. It can move surprisingly fast for such a tiny little guy!

 

[Luukosian]

How are you getting these pictures? Pretty interesting stuff there, good work.

 

[dmatt88]

These under the microscope or a new design for a stealth submarine?

Woohoo Matt has tapatalk back