Making Waves

Mandarin fish blog entry #10

All the fish have been eating well and getting along.  However, I realized that my aquarium was missing something -- not color, not form, but movement.  One of the most beautiful sights when snorkeling or scuba diving is watching the coral fronds sway back and forth in the current.  Since my existing corals had been for the most part motionless, I have added a wavy long-armed green star polyp, Pachyclavularia violacea, and Heteroxenia fuscescens, the pom pom xenia.  

Giovanni the green mandarinfish hovers between the two star polyp corals, hunting for copepods.

Pachyclavularia violacea, native to the Indo-Pacific.  Primarily photosynthetic, the neon green tentacles extend only during the day. 

Crassie the bicolor angelfish peers at me from behind a screen of Heteroxenia fuscescens, the aptly named pom pom xenia.  Xenia hail from murky lagoons and silty coastlines, and actually prefer nutrient rich waters and will not thrive in an aquarium that is kept too pristine. The polyps of this coral are constantly in motion, opening and closing to absorb dissolved nutrients from the water.

There's an old saying regarding business and murky water that goes like this:  if the water is too clear, you can't raise big fish.  Meaning that if you want to accomplish big things, at some point you will have to deal with some shady compromises.

Solitary. Just a fish and her thoughts.

Mandarin fish blog entry #9

Allie the spotted mandarinfish (Synchiropus picturatus) and Giovanni the green mandarinfish (Synchiropus splendidus) have been thriving on their diet of deshelled brine shrimp eggs, cyclops-eeze, and mysis shrimp.  Unfortunately, Allie has grown more aggressive and has been taking advantage of her larger and more chill cousin.  After seeing this go on for a few weeks, I captured the bully and placed her in a large Nantucket Nectars bottle, with a piece of live rock blocking the entrance.  There is a gap large enough for food and water to get in, but not wide enough to let her out.  I hope this is a temporary intervention until she's learned her lesson.

I did, however, get some great shots of Allie with a fish-in-a-bottle theme--

Mandarinfish aggression display!

Mandarin fish blog entry #8

Corals are fun and all, but this is the mandarinfishexpert blog after all, I realized that it was time to post some pictures of Giovanni, the male green mandarinfish (Synchiropus splendidus), who has made a terrific recovery from his prior starvation at the local pet store.  He has been growing beautiful and fat with his daily feedings of deshelled brine shrimp eggs and deep frozen cyclops-eeze.

He also has a tendency to do aggression displays for the camera, as seen below:

Beautiful yet deadly

Mandarin fish blog entry #7

Welcome to the coral reef!  Since my tiny 14 gallon biocube is currently full of fish and there have been no recent losses, the only thing I could add was more corals.  The new arrivals include a hammer coral, a galaxea coral, a candy cane coral, a brain coral, and a blue mushroom.

I have learned that there are three keys to growing corals:  the right amount of light and water movement for the species -- neither too much nor too little; small amounts of supplemental nutrients including calcium, magnesium, and iodine; and often overlooked, an activated carbon filter.  In order to survive in a reef environment where every coral is trying to outgrow their neighbors in a bid for more space and more sun, each coral is armed to the teeth with venomous stingers and releases toxins into the surrounding water to ward off competitors.  Without an activated carbon filter, toxins quickly build up to unbelievable concentrations in a closed system such as an aquarium.

 Euphyllia paranchora, the beautiful yet deadly hammer coral .  The tips fluoresce blue-green under UV light.  Extremely venomous -- keep away from other corals!

 

 Galaxea fascicularis, the Galaxy Coral -- a swirling mass of innumerable of starry-eyed tentacles, each topped with a venomous fluorescent tip.  The tentacles are able to extend to up to 10x their normal length when this coral feels crowded by its neighbors.

  

 Clavularia viridis, the star polyp coral.  A non-stinging coral, its strategy is to extend an armored encrusting cuticle in all directions, smothering its competitors.   Well-known for taking over entire aquariums given the right conditions.

 Protopalythoa psammophila, the green button polyp coral.  A mostly photosynthetic species, this coral competes by extending its mushroom-like canopy up towards the sunlight, shading and starving out its low-set competitors. 

 Nemo the clownfish and the cleaner shrimp enjoying the sights and sounds of the reef.  From this angle you can clearly see the armored purple cuticle of the star polyp coral extending over the reef.

 A close-up of the very-impressive looking cleaner shrimp, as it forages next to a small scribble brain coral.

New Friends!

Mandarin fish blog entry #6

I have just added two new fish, a small ocellaris clownfish (Amphiprion ocellaris), and a large male green mandarinfish (Synchiropus splendidus).  Both fish are eating and doing well!  As is often the case, the green mandarin was quite thin and lurking in the corner of the tank hardly moving when I rescued him from the local fish store.  After feeding him some decapsulated brine shrimp eggs though, he quickly perked back up and has now joined his smaller spotted mandarin cousin in browsing the live rock, looking for food.

Thus far, he has only been interested in picking off the tiny brine shrimp eggs from the live rock, but I am hopeful that I will be able to train him to eat frozen mysis shrimp, since he should be large enough to be engaged by larger sized foods.

R.I.P.

Mandarin fish blog entry #5

Unfortunately, Eleanor the white spotted pufferfish and Eli the male spotted mandarinfish both jumped into the filter pump, and thus have passed on.  Even though the Nanocube tank is covered with a hood, there is a one inch gap which allows fish to jump out of the main aquarium and into the back of the setup, where the filtration system resides.  I don't know why the Nanocubes were built with such a gaping design flaw.  I have now placed a net in the back that will prevent any further ill-advised acrobatics.

Eleanor was a great fish who was often misunderstood.  She would frequently terrorize the shrimp by biting off its antennae.  However, Eleanor never meant the shrimp any harm, and was only chewing on hard things because she was teething.  After proper dental care, she never bothered the shrimp again.  The following is an excellent article on small puffer dentistry: http://www.wetwebmedia.com/fwsubwebindex/smpufferdentistry.htm

Meanwhile, in the absence of Eleanor, the shrimp has reached truly magnificent proportions.  

Mandarin fish food spreadsheet

Mandarin fish blog entry #4

The greatest difficulty in keeping mandarins is their feeding requirements:  in the wild, mandarins subsist on a diet consisting almost entirely of microscopic live marine crustaceans and tiny marine worms.  In order to sustain themselves on such small prey, they must hunt continuously.  By the time most pet mandarins reach their eventual owners, they have spent weeks in holding and transport with nothing to eat, and are often in very bad shape.

A common misconception is that mandarinfishes only take live foods, which would suggest that they only eat foods that move.  On the contrary, having watched mandarinfishes hunt, I have observed that even when catching live prey, they tend to strike stationary targets.  The reason why most conventional fish foods are rejected by mandarins is not because they are not live, but because of their size.  The preferred food particle size for mandarinfishes is 1/5 to 1/2 of a millimeter, which is about the size of a speck of dust, or the period at the end of this sentence.  Live marine crustaceans larger than this tend to be ignored, as my mandarins would hunt live copepods exclusively while passing up the much fatter amphipods in my aquarium.

 Mandarinfish foods spreadsheet:

	Frozen brine shrimp (5mm)	Frozen mysis shrimp (5mm)	Deshelled brine shrimp eggs (0.25 mm)	Wild copepods (0.5 mm)	Capelin roe (sushi fish eggs) (2mm)	Dry foods (flake, new life spectrum pellets)	Refrigerated Arctic copepods (non-frozen, 2mm)	Notes
Green mandarin, 4 inch male, (store bought, poor condition, very skinny)	yes	no	-	no	-	no	no	Died within 24 hours of purchase from general poor health
Spotted mandarin, 1.5 inch male (ORA tank-raised)	no	no	-	no	-	no	no	Starved after 3 weeks.  Ate nothing, didn’t know how to catch wild copepods.
Spotted mandarin, 2 inch female (wild)	yes	yes	-	yes	-	no	no	Did great, but suffocated due to aquarium power outage
Spotted mandarin, 1.5 inch male (wild)	no	no	yes	yes	yes	no	no	Doing great, now extremely fat
Spotted mandarin, 1.5 inch female (wild)	no	no	yes	yes	no	no	no	Doing great, now very fat

Clean Tank at last!

Mandarin fish blog entry #3

All the experimenting with different foods to get the mandarinfish to eat had elevated my nitrate and phosphate levels through the aquarium hood!  Finally did a complete water change and cleanout today.  Dr. Hannah Chang states that if the aquarium stays in such great pristine shape for a year, I can move it to the living room as a showpiece.  One day down, 364 more to go!

All fish and corals are doing well.  A special thanks to my beautiful wife for the (slightly less) beautiful new Xenia coral for my birthday!

 

Eli perched on brain coral.

Allie hunts for copepods!

Eleanor fans her tail.  Note the beautiful purple colors of the local boston harbor Corallina algae in the backdrop.

A big thank you to my wife for lending me her fantastic Canon camera (which I got for her.)