Animal 4You: Mandarinfish

Mandarinfish | What a beautiful fish. We can meet the Mandarinfish in the western Pacific Ocean such as in the waters of Australia, China (Taiwan), Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Micronesia, New Caledonia, Palau, Papua New Guinea, and the Philippines. The geographical distance lies from the Ryukyu Islands of Japan to Australia. We only find the Mandarinfish in tropical waters.

The Mandarinfish or Mandarin dragonet (Synchiropus splendidus), is a small, brightly-colored member of the dragonet family, which is popular in the saltwater aquarium trade.

The Mandarinfish lives in inshore reefs and shallow protected lagoons, including silty bottoms with coral and rubble. The depth range for the Mandarinfish is 1-18 meters / 3.3-59 feet. They are primarily bottom dwelling. They like staying in small groups. Sometimes they hide under foliose (leaf-like) and dead coral.

The Mandarinfish are difficult to keep, because their feeding habits are very specific. Some of them never adapt to aquarium life, they refuse to eat anything but they live amphipods and copepods (as in the wild). It's so difficult for them to acclimatize and the aquarium foods are highly resistant to diseases such as ich. They cannot survive from the disease Ichthyophthirius because they do not have the skin type that this common aquarium disease affects.

The mandarinfish don't not have scales. The mandarinfish is protected by a mucous-coated slimy and smelly skin, which not only protects them from most parasitic skin diseases, but also hampers predators. Their bright color gives out warning to predators due to their nasty smell and taste. Scorpionfish often lies waiting to attack an unsuspecting mandarinfish, normally during the mating ritual.