Green mandarin dragonet

Care at a glance

Overview

The green mandarin dragonet is a peaceful, slow-moving bottom forager for a mature reef tank. It is demanding and best left to experienced keepers.

Caring for the green mandarin dragonet

Add a green mandarin dragonet only to a well established reef of at least 53 gal (200 L), nine to twelve months old. The tank needs a large volume of live rock and live sand, ideally fed by a refugium or a pod-dosing routine.

Keep the water at 75 to 81°F (24 to 27°C) with a pH of 8.1 to 8.4. Its difficulty comes entirely from diet, since it needs a constant supply of live copepods and amphipods. Captive-bred and trained specimens that accept frozen and prepared foods are far easier and much preferred.

The green mandarin dragonet is peaceful and completely reef safe, ignoring corals and inverts. Two males will fight, so keep one male per tank.

Males are larger than females, with a tall, elongated first dorsal spine. During courtship a pair rises off the reef together at dusk, belly to belly. They release eggs and sperm in a single upward burst, then dart back to the bottom. Breeding them is hard.

Good to know

The green mandarin dragonet, Synchiropus splendidus, is a dragonet in the family Callionymidae. It has no scales and instead secretes a thick, bitter-tasting mucus that deters predators and parasites.

In the wild

Green mandarin dragonets range across the western Pacific, from the Ryukyu Islands south through the Philippines and Indonesia to Australia and New Caledonia. They live on sheltered inshore reefs and lagoons with plenty of rubble and coral. They spend the whole day slowly hopping across the bottom and picking at tiny crustaceans. They are constant foragers rather than swimmers, completely tied to the substrate and rockwork.

Common questions

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