Here I go The Spotted Manderin

[surfzone]

This is not the first time my mandarins have spawned in my tank and in all honesty it is a regular occurrence. Seemingly every night I catch my male and female rising into the blue light water and stopping at the surface. This ritual goes on for hours and ends with the release of eggs and sperm. The spawns grow larger and larger with every week. Although I would like to think that they are getting enough to eat I supplement their diet with thawed brine and mysis shrimp in a baby food jar that I have placed in the rock work. It took a little while for them to find, but they both look forward to feeding times. Both of them eat all the food and then go on the hunt for copepods and other bugs that are in the rock.
Last night was one of the largest spawns that they have produced. I noticed that they went on a week long love strike and last night was the breaking point. I watched them as they made accent after accent and like a flash of lighting there was a massive release of eggs. I quickly collected these eggs and placed them into a plastic fishbowl added an air pump to create a slow bubble and went to bed. In the morning the eggs were still in tact and sticking together. I fed the tank and went off to work. I came home to a fish bowl full of pro-larva.
I intend to try my hand at raising this bunch using a mixture of rotifers, and wild collected plankton. I have spent a large amount of time on MOFIB reading Matthew Wittenrich’s thread on the green mandarins, and reading the threads of others who are attempting the greens. The major thought in my mind is there much of a difference between the greens, and the spotted? I got my answer when a friend and I went to MACNAXX in Atlanta, Ga. We both went to Matthew Wittenrich’s talk on marine fish breeding and one of the topics of discussion was mandarins and not just green mandarins, but spotted mandarins. According to Matthew’s experience spotted mandarins have a shorter larval period than the greens. I thought surely this would be a good start if I am to try this. I have collected the eggs before only to find that the larva die at around 4 days after hatch.
I took a few pics of the pro-larva tonight at 24 hours old wish me luck

[prow]

O best of luck to you, it would be sweet if you can get some to make to fush~hood.

[surfzone]

I took some pics of the lovely parents tonight. i think there may be another spawn the female is looking rather plump. the pro-larva are developing well. i lost a few but the majority of them are still wriggling around.

Dad

Mom


here are some development pics. they are kinda blury , but you get the idea

one day old


two days old

[seafansar]

Cool! Good luck!!!!!

[Frankie]

Good luck Kevin! The Manderin's are beautiful

[Tonz of fun]

let me know if you can get them to eat frozen food. I would boy one...

[sandyc]

Best of luck!! Keep us posted on the development.

[surfzone]

I woke up this morning to find the larva to have eyes and a mouth so I added rotifers and some DTs to the tank. at first i wasn't sure if they where eating at all, but tonight on closer inspection i noticed that they are eating the rotifers. Sweet.!

[lcstorc]

Awesome news. Please keep us updated on the progress.

[yungreefer2410]

i hope they make i would love to have a manderin

[naperenterprise]

Very exciting!

[Woodstock]

Awesome!! The best of luck to you

[surfzone]

thanks for all the well wishes everyone. if i can get only one to meta i would consider this a success. on another note i was able to track down four young TR banggai cardinals today and have them in a 5 g tank to grow out a little more.

[prow]

[SeaMunky]

Wow...great thread...I will be tagging along..I love the manderins!!!..Good Luck with the meta my friend...