Yes the bigger one might be dominant but the little guy might not be so willing to give up the opportunity quite yet being so close in size. It’s in their nature if they are of similar size to fight for that top spot.
So your insight in clownfish is that they freely hang out in our tanks and they want to fight to the death without any resting up in between fights to regain strength?
I am still not sure we can agree about this, not at all, sorry :)
In the wild there are usually numerous immature males around waiting for the opportunity to become the mature male. As the mature male/female die then the next in line transitions.
That is indeed what clownfish do, but doesn't really work as a counterargument for anything I said Nick.
Once again in their nature to be in groups waiting for the opportunity to become next in line.
Yeah, and they move around up to fifteen square miles while our tank-pets doesn't actually. Our tank pets are forced to take beatings, why be saying on a forum that it is anything like "natural"? Why not just admit that it is not and try to help people with good advice for our lovely and artificially created pet habitats?
In our tanks its not the normal setting so the aggression is usually pin pointed to one other clown. Also separating them for a few days will not allow the less dominant one to start it’s transitioning process. That takes months in the right conditions.
Actually it takes about 10 minutes for the fish to start relaxing enough to begin to develop gender hormones which is why you see the dominant fish chasing the others constantly.
It takes month to change into a female fish.
- it does not take months to feel like a dominant fish, that is two completely different things - completely :)
Since they Are separated for the past 2 days... the point is to get the little one back in good shape?
From what I have been noticing is that the smaller is all around the breeder box. I have seen the female charge once but hasn’t since. I don’t know if she has finally came off her high horse or anything but the little one is swimming all over the place and still eating like a champ.
Yes they do that, they will call for eachother to come, try to get through the net and all that, and they will continue to do so as long as they are separated. All they wanna do is play with eachother and be as one-fish.
But if one runs out of energy, and small fish do that sometimes, the big fish will instinctively test it to see if it is a "hazard" to the flock, or school, of fishes. If the smaller fish is found to be continuesly weak over several days, it will be chased away or killed.
But any dominant fish wants to be the BEST swimmer, so don't let your small fish practice without her for too long or she might punish it alittle when it gets the chance to do so :)
Thank you for sharing a lot of insight about the matter. I have my fingers crossed this works and that both are fine. I do remember asking the owner, you don’t think the size are too close because i am used to getting one bigger clowns and one smaller but in this case... these are harder to find in groups to pick from, so only this pair came in. Should of trusted my instincts as I never had this issue in the past. Here is my rock work.
That was exactly why I thought that exploiting the damages the small fish had, to allow the already superior fish to settle in more. That way the "female" will go into growth burst sooner than if they are interrupted in settling in while the damaged fish keeps feeling down enough to not be a rebel :)
Really beautiful rockwork, much like the basic rockscape that I used for a 60L nano but I also had to separate and rearrange little things :)
It gets ...really hard, to place power heads and anemone in nanos and also have to rearrange it all later after putting fishes in but...
You have a great tank and if I can make mine work for clowns, you can definitely get happy clowns out of what you got going now regardless of similar sizing.
