mandarin fish

Looks like today will mostly be a working on the dragon day.  

Art goal this week 8hrs

Today 

work on Dragon

Animal

The mandarin fish (Synchiropus splendidus) is a beautiful, brightly colored dragonlet that ranges from the Ryuku island to Southern Australia. They secrete a bitter, toxic mucus from their skin that helps to deter predators. They are unfortunately very popular in the aquarium hobby due to their bright colors, despite having a terrible rate of survival in captivity. A few aquarists treat them a bit like very expensive cut flowers, although in the wild or extremely good captive conditions they can live about 10 years. In good captive conditions they have bred which is unusual for salt water fish. Perhaps one day the captive bred individuals, which would be much more likely to eat in captivity will replace the wild caught individuals. Mandarinfish are bottom feeders that eat mostly small crustaceans. They spawn in the open water like massive open ocean fish, such as tuna despite their tiny size. Unfortunately, the largest most colorful males (most popular for collection for the aquarium hobby) are most likely to successfully spawn. The smaller males do not exhibit an alternate mating strategy as many fish do, and females will sometimes reject them in the absence of larger male.