Mandarin Dragonet Eggs and now Babies

[Duke]

Well if anyone checked out my tank pictures from a few days ago i mentioned how plump my female was.. well her belly doubled in size the last 2 days and last night i witnessed my two mandarins engaged in courtship over and over again for around 25 minutes. Today she was still fat so after reading alot about the habits of mating mandarins it seemed likely it would happen again tonight with a fairly good chance of an actual spawn, got the whole pre spawn courting on film.. this went on for 2 hours. i actually witnessed the spawn itself around midnight but shitty thing was i had already given up after spending 2 hours taking clips with a video camera infront of my tank. Tomorrow i will post some highlights of the videos from last night and tonight so you can all see but for now heres a shot of maybe 75 or so of the eggs i actually collected afterwords.. i guess there was 200-300 total but there very small and hard to get. i need a magnifying glass to see whats going on better tomorrow but after like 50 pictures i got the eggs to be in focus kinda. i have them sitting in a glass in my sump to keep the temps up, eggs only take 12-16 hr to hatch.. so if i can actually get fertile eggs and have any hatch i might consider the possibilities of raising them at a later date, once i get setup for it. check these out.

 

[Zakk]

Re: Mandarin Dragonet Eggs

Can't you just get some regular style porn on the internet?  ;D

 

[El concistador]

Re: Mandarin Dragonet Eggs

Here's a link that you might find helpful, if you don't already know of it.

http://www.marinebreeder.org/forums/

 

[teebone110]

Re: Mandarin Dragonet Eggs

That's awesome! How long have you had the mandarins and where did you get them from?

 

[Duke]

Re: Mandarin Dragonet Eggs

The female came from Sea Life Central around 4 or 5 months ago, she lived in their sump in the back room. the male i've had for about a month or maybe 6 weeks i guess, eggs look to still be kickin it this morning. gunna go grab a big magnifying glass in a bit so i can see better.

 

[phi delt reefer]

Re: Mandarin Dragonet Eggs

i`ll buy a baby if you can raise em on frozen or pellets or flakes!

$50

do you have access to rotifers to feed during the initial feed?

 

[reeffreak]

Re: Mandarin Dragonet Eggs

If you don't plan on raising the fry , please contact me I'm willing to raise them , I'm also have a pair of clowns that are now laying eggs so I do have everything needed .

 

[Duke]

Re: Mandarin Dragonet Eggs

well i wasnt planning on raising them because im not prepared for it.. it takes more than rotifiers to raise mandarins, you need ss rotifiers, seems like multiple strains helps alot, phyto and probably a large established copepod culture, good thing is mandarins spawn very frequently, like every 2-5 days from what i've been reading.
reef freak, this is their second batch of eggs so its probably not worth attempting to raise them, but by all means if you have what you need to try, i can give you some eggs next time they spawn. im going to try and see if i can get ahold of this older dude in london who raises sea horses and see if he would be willing to help me out with some rotifiers and phyto strains.

 

[reeffreak]

Re: Mandarin Dragonet Eggs

I'm just drivin home right now let me pm u when I get there

 

[Duke]

Re: Mandarin Dragonet Eggs

Heres a video of the actual release of eggs, im dissapointed with how shitty all the videos turned out. i was worried about turning a light on because i didnt want to disrupt them but none the less its still pretty cool, maybe next time ill just say f it and use a flashlight and see if they'll still do it. off to get a magnifying glass so i can see these eggs better.. according to what i've read they technically will be ready to hatch sometime after noon but before tomorrow, ill throw some pictures up soon.

http://s1221.photobucket.com/albums/dd462/dukester_/?action=view&current=Produce.mp4

 

[Zakk]

Re: Mandarin Dragonet Eggs

haha they knew you were filming.  You perv.  ;D

 

[Neopimp]

lol

 

[Duke]

lol... maybe they did know, either way..

at 3:00 there was 0 hatched, and now at 4:00 there is around 10-12 hatched, they are very small and still have the egg sac attached but they are swimming around and seem pretty active for only being minutes old. heres a picture of them.. i would put them at 1.5mm in size at most. hard to take pictures of thats forsure. theres only 4 or 5 showing in the picture but im guessing before long there going to be alot of babys as most of the eggs look like they are ready to hatch. lol who knew this would be so easy right of the get go

 

[Zakk]

If you raise them I'll take a mated paid lol.  You could be rich like astronauts!