Bought a Mandarin!

I bet your mandarin is an ORA bred species. Was it somewhere in the neighborhood of $50?

 

Congrats, nice looking fish. Good luck with her. I hope to get one some day.

Brian

 

She is beautiful and she looks very happy in her new environment.

 

I thought she may have been an ORA Mandarin, but the ORA mandarins don't appear to be anywhere near as colorful as the wild ones, at least from the pictures I've seen of them. The guy at the LFS(one of the few I actually trust), called it a jumbo mandarin, and said typically the females have a darker pattern but are less timid also. She cost $30.00 so it wasn't a bad deal at all. They ordered it from a fishery which caught them in the wild. There was a male in the tank, but it wasn't coming out at all so I figured it would be easier on the guy to catch the female which was eating at the time anyways.

 

yep the "jumbo" mandarins are wild caught from the philippines they are rather huge

 

Wow! I want to look into the jumbo too. These are some of the most gorgeous fish I have been interested in keeping in my 90g.

 

I got it to eat some frozen mysis shrimp tonight. Definitely lucked out on this one.

 

Wow, this is one gorgeous little fish!!! I have a pair of them that I have had for about three years now...I was working at LFS when I ordered them from ORA as a mated pair. When they arrived, I acclimated them to a small tank so I could observe them and keep changing out live rock for a fresh copepod loaded rock and started offering them thawed out mysis shrimp with a bulb syringe about 2-3 times a day...I had an unlimited supply of copepod laden live rock so they were well supplied with their natural prey and as soon as they barely started accepting the mysis, I began to back off on the copepods. Before long...(about a month) they were totally switched over to a mysis diet.

When they were first delivered to the store, one of them (turned out to be the female) was totally missing a frontal dorsal fin...(had just a little ridge) and the other (turned out to be a male) had a normal looking frontal dorsal fin, with the beginning of a little spike at the beginning of the fin. As time went on, his spike grew steadily until it was truly magnificent, arching back over his dorsal fin. As far as I know, there has been no mating dance or eggs laid...but I wouldn't know as the eggs would probably end up in the overflow or the sump...hmmm, maybe I should try to figure out how to check out the overflow!!!

Anyway, don't be at all surprised if you find that your little girl is just a young undeveloped male...I wish you luck in your endeavors, This is the most satisfying addiction I have found and my Mandarins are the jewels in my tank!!!

 

thanks! Yeah I've always been very fascinated in mandarins just scared to get them, that's really great that you could wean them completely onto mysis. My Scopas tang is very competitive for mysis so I've had to get pretty close to get the mandarin to eat it so far, def not going to be an every day thing yet. You could be right about the little "horn" she has with the dorsal, I was thinking the same thing but either way still a beautiful fish.

 

ohh mandarins. if they arent the most beautiful fish out ther? but beauty has its price