Picturesque dragonet
| Picturesque dragonet | |
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| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Actinopterygii |
| Order: | Perciformes |
| Suborder: | Callionymoidei |
| Family: | Callionymidae |
| Genus: | Synchiropus |
| Species: | S. picturatus |
| Binomial name | |
| Synchiropus picturatus (Peters, 1877) |
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| Synonyms | |
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Picturesque dragonet, Synchiropus picturatus, is a Dragonet from the Indo-West Pacific: Philippines, eastern Indonesia and northwest Australia. It occasionally makes its way into the aquarium trade, where it is commonly known as the Spotted Mandarin, Psychedelic mandarin or Target Mandarin. It grows to a size of 7 cm in length. They have thick slime on their skin that inhibits many types of parasitic infection and minimises the risk of disease following stress or physical trauma. This seems to help protect them from some other more agressive fish.
In the aquarium:
Reef Compatible?
Yes
Feeding?
Natural feeding habits entail constantly browsing the substrate for copepods and other small invertebrates. Systems with an additional refugium are ideal, as these can help to generate suitable levels of food organisms as it prefers to peck on live rock. Because of this it can be a hard fish to keep. It can, however, be weaned on to frozen food such as Mysis, Artemia and other prepared foods but these alone are unlikely to sustain them, particularly if it is having to compete with other tankmates.
How compatible is it with other fish?
This fish is peaceful and does better with peaceful tankmates.
[edit] References
Media related to Synchiropus picturatus at Wikimedia Commons
- Froese, Rainer, and Daniel Pauly, eds. (2008). "Synchiropus picturatus" in FishBase. December 2008 version.
- Practical Fishkeeping Psychedelic mandarinfish
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