Just to be clear, the kissing mandarin fishes are spawning practically every day. At dusk they come out from their hideouts and start to mate.
They are some of the most colored fishes we can find in our aquariums, but they show these colors to warn eventual predators that they are poisonous.
His scientific name is Synchiropus from ancient greek roots syn = merged, chirus = hand - splendidus from latin and meaning magnificent or gorgeous. His name mandarin comes from the color pattern of the Chinese mandarin outfits. Described in 1927 by Albert William Christian Theodore HERRE (does he need a longer name ?), we can find him in the West Pacific ocean, and he is under Least Concern on the IUCN red list.
I've had a pretty hard time to figure out how to render its incredible colors, especially with watercolors. I think my best option would be to create my own watercolors as I cannot find any that suits my need in my local shop... So I've worked with some acrylic inks to get to my result ! The color came out great but the texture ended up kind of weird...
Hope you've liked it. I'm on some other great projects and ideas coming soon ;)
Prenez soin de vous,
Arnaudt.
Bibliography :
- MITEL Cédric, LEON Virginie, PONTON Dominique, SITTLER Alain-Pierre in : DORIS, 26/09/2016 : Synchiropus splendidus (Herre, 1927), https://doris.ffessm.fr/ref/specie/436
- Contributeurs de Wikipédia, "Synchiropus splendidus," Wikipédia, l'encyclopédie libre, https://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Synchiropus_splendidus&oldid=149432966 (Page consultée le juin 11, 2018).
- Contributeurs de Wikipédia, "Albert William Christian Theodore Herre," Wikipédia, l'encyclopédie libre, https://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Albert_William_Christian_Theodore_Herre&oldid=155572369 (Page consultée le janvier 7, 2019).
- Carpenter, K.E. & Robertson, R. 2019. Synchiropus splendidus. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2019: e.T141481104A141781313. http://dx.doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2019-2.RLTS.T141481104A141781313.en. Downloaded on 23 November 2019.