unsuspected friendship

Alright I've had a reef tank for a little over a year now and through out time I have picked up various fish from break downs etc. One fish i picked up was an orange spot prawn goby who mostly keeps to himself etc. A couple weeks ago I picked up a green mandarin from another tank break down who will even pick at flakes on the bottom of the tank ;D. However when I first added him a couple weeks ago I was a little worried him and the goby would not get along since they are similarly shaped and share a common area of the tank as well as the goby being larger and established in the tank for atleast 6 months now. So I have been monitoring the tank for the past 2 weeks making sure everyone gets along with the newest member of the tank and I even check up on the tank at night with a red flashlight because I like to know where everybody sleeps when last night to my surprise i found the goby and mandari sleeping next to one another . I had seen them close to each other on a few occasions and they both showed no aggression toward one another no flaring of fins or anything but them sleeping with each other still came as a shock to me.

heres a couple picture of it







this little mandarin is one of the best adds to the tank, hes tough and friendly plus on some prepared foods. Just yesterday he had a rough adventure. I woke up at 6 am to my return pump going nuts, I am a light sleeper and the tank is in my bedroom, and I found that I had a clog in my drain. So I figured it was just another snail and blew out my drain line and it was still clogged so I sucked on it and saw something dark come sliding down and get stuck at the valve(i have clear vinyl tubing as my drain line). I pulled apart the pvc at the valve and shook it out and heard a plop go into my sump so I figured I'll get the snail later and went back to sleep. I woke up went to work etc and when I came home I was looking in my tank with the lights on and noticed I could not find the mandarin anywhere and hes usually a very friendly guy and comes out of the rock work whenever I walk into the room. So my heart dropped and I shined my flashlight in the sump and there he was sitting there staring at me and perfectly fine so I scooped him up and put him back in my DT....the pvc is only 3/4 inch and he could barely fit into it so the stress on him being stuck let alone getting shot down into the sump and sitting there for 6+ hours and surviving with no apparent damage amazed me alone and he was back to scooting around the tank like nothing happened after about an hour or so of rest

 

That's awesome! I can't see the pictures, though.

 

just fixed the pictures

 

I can see them now ;D That's very cool.

 

psychedelic mandarin. The "green" version is a green "spotted" mandarin. They are overall green with circle type pattern. not trying to be rude or correct you just some info

But very cool never the less.

 

i thought the one with the spots were target mandarins, everyone I have heard usually call them green mandarin sorry if the terminology is wrong

 

well i guess it is called green by a lot of people...i was always told it was a psychadelic mandarin. and the green one was always refereed to as spotted mandarin.

 

tomatoes, tomatoes lol the type of mandarin is not important for the story lol!

 

yes very cool story, oh and if it looks dead at night time.... don't worry. They just loose color at night, probably so other fish think they are dead and don't try and eat them.

 

figured that lol, well they're poisonous to most fish so i doubt anyone wants to eat him anyway lol