Mandarin and Scooter Dragonets

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Mandarin Dragonet: Pairing

Pairing is problematic, adolescent male can be (and was in this case) mistaken for female, and he is the one, who had the hell of a life from an adult male.

At the first sight of troubles, don't wait for nervous breakdown and physical injuries, and place them in the different tanks (or temporary container, or call to LFS and give the nasty one back, beauty doesn't matter). Even the opposite sex may have a miserable existence.

Sexing:

The male mandarin has a high erected first dorsal spine in the rare seconds of glory.

Dull and unimpressive creature all other time.

But: in the store you will not see that, only the long ray along the back. Short, if it is an young male.

Females are having the short and simple one, as well as the younger males before maturation.

Scooters - almost the same, male with a twice higher dorsal fin, not only the first spine, and has a round "eyes" on it. Mine are likely to be females, with the simple "bat wing" dorsal fin.

Aquascaping to reduce aggression:

Worked only for scooters and only after a months of well fed life in separate tanks. Placing pieces of the rock and corals the way, that they disrupt direct visual contact with the victim frequently, as an aggressor moves. The aggressive scooter was losing interest and started picking food in the rock.

Selection

Another word of advice, it may work, may not: don't ask the store personnel to choose fish for you - it's you who will have to put up with this fish. Choose the particular personality, you will reconize your fish at once, when you see it.

I didn't do that with mandarins, and eventually returned the fish to the store, one year later. Luckily, it was at once reserved for an advanced aquarist.

It would be better to buy the full bodied, not the starved mandarin with concave belly. They will need all accumulated energy resources they have. Mine were small, but in good condition.

For the scooters it was not important. In case of the my second scooter, after two weeks of starvation in the store (may be even more, I bought the last of the group two weeks later, than the first scooter) it looked as a dried fish, and restored more or less alive appearance in a month of peaceful well fed life.

Now, as it was said somewhere, as far as aquarist is concerned, the things that matter when choosing the fish: size, appearance, personality and potential problems.

Size:

Body length, for mandarins and scooters: around 3" or 7.5 cm, mine scooters - closer to 2" (5 cm), but in LFS I had seen 3" long monsters.

Tank size:

Tank size for more or less comfortable living - minimum 20 gal (or 74 l) long, if the food is provided. To have the place to swim, what is particularly ipmortant for active scooters. The young individuals may be confined to a smaller quarters for a some time.

After separation from affressors, one scooter and one chromis had a peaceful time in 10g tank. Scooter slept a lot and recovered health. But 20gL is just a right size (you still have to feed them), much better.

Jumping

By the way, it was a short time when the scooter jumped off the tank, within 5 min after abrupt turning off lights in the evening. After leaving the weak side light, 13W, for a 40 min or so, the jumping stopped.

Next page: Recovery of one eyed scooter.

Dragonets:

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