Actual experience keeping 2 mandarin males?

Lionfish hunter · Apr 21, 2023

I bought a pair of mandarins, 2 males were sent. 1 has been in my display for a few months. The other is in its own aquarium. Does anybody have actual experience with 2 males in the same tank? If so, how big? My aquarium is 235 gallons.

actual experience please. I have seen a hundred posts of people saying you can’t do it that have never actually seen it in real life. I am trying to do what is best for the animals. Certainly there is a chance one will kill the other, but at the same time, giving it to a fish store potentially exposing it to ich and having them sell it to someone who probably knows little about fish is almost a certain death sentence.

KrisReef · Apr 21, 2023

I was thinking about “Brokeback Mountain” reading your title and then I read your post. Ill can the jokes on account of you’re trying to solve a real moral dilemma about protecting your fishes responsibly and that’s not a thing to make light of.
With the preamble out of the way,

Im pretty carefree when it comes to fish introductions with regard to possible negative interactions. I generally would avoid your own situation, when it happens I “take it as a sign” that these two fishes are going to be better off together than the “pair” I was expecting when two were ordered. Hence, in this situation I would probably dump them in the DT and see how it goes. If I had another tank that I could easily remove them from I might have given them a trial run in that tank to see how they interact with each other. Ithey lived to fight each other then I would find another place for one of them.
I think this is the point where you’re asking for information about and I think you are the only person who has the two fish that you want answers for. If you can get them both in the same 5 gallon bucket I think you would be able to obtain the information that you want us to provide guidance about. Put a small amount of rock cover in the bucket and see if they can share that cover or if they jostle about to get the protection while exposing the other guy.

Try picking them both up in your hand, first one fish at a time and then both fishes together. Sometimes fish like company in stressful situations and other times they can’t bear to be with the other guy. See how they behave and project their responses into what you can expect once they are together in your tank.
Sometimes they have no female to pose for and they will just be ok to have the company of another guy who is marooned in a lonely place.