Capturing Mandarin Fish

I put some of my personal techniques on this blog

http://interceptor121.wordpress.com/2013/06/16/tips-for-capturing-mating-mandarin-fish/

It's a funny/duplicitous title to the post, very interesting read thanks for sharing.

I didn't get video of Mandarin fish mating, but I got them fighting, which I was told it's rare. When the fight, boy, they could care less about light, I had my 1200 lumen video light on them and just keep going, I snap photos and video and that doesn't bother them. I tried red light custom white balance on a night dive and the result is not good. May be I should try it during the day time and see, there is always a next trip to Lembeh!

Fighting is not that rare as long as the male outweigh the females, this could be due to the fact that the females are even more skittish (see the section on lights)

Usually you can get quite close to two males fighting but the mating will happen faw away from your lights if you look carefully

That is one of the tricks to learn if you want to see them mating your lights have to be weak

Wish I had read this before my Solemans trip.

Had a devil of a time without a red focus light.

I would add, bring a guide.

The footage I got was two female fighting. The female are the bigger one. There is a trick to get close, well, actually it's to wait for them to get close. The dive guide kept signal us not to take photo until the mandarin fish keep coming out and getting closer and closer to us. We had a great dive guide, and the ratio of dive guide to diver is 1 dive guide for every 3 diver. Since their Nitrox was not available when we where there, they accommodate and gave us 1 dive guide for every two divers. It was an excellent dive!

The males with larger dorsal fin are the bigger ones...