I figured I'd start a new thread to keep things cleaner. For those who don't know I have a @Biota_Marine captive bred male mandarin and I purchased a wild caught female from a LFS that was skinny at first. I quickly trained (or should I say the Biota mandarin trained her) to eat pellet and frozen food.
My tank is a 35 gallon cube (20"x20"x20") with a Sapphire 34 sump with a refugium and an 8'ish gallon remote display refugium. I culture Tisbe, Tigger and Apo pods (two one gallon cultures of each) and dose about 450ml of phyto (7 strains) to keep the pod population and all my NPS corals happy. I also have white worms cultures and have an @Printed Reef mandarin feeder setup and two brine shrimp hatchery dishes for feeding tank freshly hatched BBS.
I must be doing something as I have fattened up the wild caught mandarin quite well and rather quickly. I first put her in the remote display fuge as it was packed with pods and I got her eating TDO in there. I figured it was better than a small acclimation box in the DT.
About two weeks ago I noticed the male and female mandarins were acting differently and paying waaaaaaayyyyy more attention to each other during the daytime and the male was flashing his dorsal fin a lot so I set up a Wyze camera to see if they were breeding. Sure enough I saw them do the spawning dance up to the top of the tank and saw the cloud of eggs and sperm!
Since then I've been tracking their spawning with the camera (not the best) to get times and days. I have it down where I can tell based on their behavior right before lights go off if they'll spawn. Spawning typically happens 7:38-8:20 pm. It appears to be almost every night at this point unless I forget to feed the tank or I go down and turn on the basement lights after 7pm or the Wyze camera doesn't record and I have to reformat the microsd card!
Tonight they did the spawning dance for almost 6 minutes. I can't tell if it was multiple spawns or just attempts that were messed up by the flow. I plan to experiment and turn 1 or both of the powerhead off around 7:40 pm for about and hour and see if that improves anything.
Eventually I will try and capture the spawning on my cell phone to get much better footage but for now the Wyze camera works for tracking purposes. It is a bit tideous to watch back the footage on my cell but it's been doable so far.
Stay tuned for more updates as they come! Just need to get off my rear end and start my parvo pod cultures and plumb a larvae and grow out tank after that! I already ordered some of the smallest TDO pellets in anticipation and plan to get some frozen copepods for frozen food training if I am lucky enough to capture the eggs and try and raise them!
Here's two minutes of tonight's spawning dance attempts!
My tank is a 35 gallon cube (20"x20"x20") with a Sapphire 34 sump with a refugium and an 8'ish gallon remote display refugium. I culture Tisbe, Tigger and Apo pods (two one gallon cultures of each) and dose about 450ml of phyto (7 strains) to keep the pod population and all my NPS corals happy. I also have white worms cultures and have an @Printed Reef mandarin feeder setup and two brine shrimp hatchery dishes for feeding tank freshly hatched BBS.
I must be doing something as I have fattened up the wild caught mandarin quite well and rather quickly. I first put her in the remote display fuge as it was packed with pods and I got her eating TDO in there. I figured it was better than a small acclimation box in the DT.
About two weeks ago I noticed the male and female mandarins were acting differently and paying waaaaaaayyyyy more attention to each other during the daytime and the male was flashing his dorsal fin a lot so I set up a Wyze camera to see if they were breeding. Sure enough I saw them do the spawning dance up to the top of the tank and saw the cloud of eggs and sperm!
Since then I've been tracking their spawning with the camera (not the best) to get times and days. I have it down where I can tell based on their behavior right before lights go off if they'll spawn. Spawning typically happens 7:38-8:20 pm. It appears to be almost every night at this point unless I forget to feed the tank or I go down and turn on the basement lights after 7pm or the Wyze camera doesn't record and I have to reformat the microsd card!
Tonight they did the spawning dance for almost 6 minutes. I can't tell if it was multiple spawns or just attempts that were messed up by the flow. I plan to experiment and turn 1 or both of the powerhead off around 7:40 pm for about and hour and see if that improves anything.
Eventually I will try and capture the spawning on my cell phone to get much better footage but for now the Wyze camera works for tracking purposes. It is a bit tideous to watch back the footage on my cell but it's been doable so far.
Stay tuned for more updates as they come! Just need to get off my rear end and start my parvo pod cultures and plumb a larvae and grow out tank after that! I already ordered some of the smallest TDO pellets in anticipation and plan to get some frozen copepods for frozen food training if I am lucky enough to capture the eggs and try and raise them!
Here's two minutes of tonight's spawning dance attempts!
