Extremely aggressive clownfish pairing behavior

[monicalooze]

I have a pair of ocellaris clowns; they have been together for seven weeks were totally fine.

In the last two days, the larger of the clowns is probably trying to pair, but it is incredibly violent. The smaller clown has damage to just about all of his fins and has been hiding at the surface, almost jumping out of the water while being attacked. I'm worried the larger clown may kill the smaller of the two.

The other odd thing about this is that the larger of the two both attacks and does the weird submissive twitch, which I thought the males did.

I put the smaller one in an acclimation box to give him a break, but I want to now how long I should let this continue before I give away the mean one.

 

[LiveWire]

IMO They look to be about the same size and they will fight until they work out who is going to be the BOSS. I have had them where they lock jaws daily together trying to figure it out. When they are close to the same size they will both also twitch so that is normal. You an keep one in the box for awhile to keep things calm. You can also feed one more than the other and that one will get bigger than the other and will end up being the BOSS.

 

[Seaspirit]

I have a pair of ocellaris clowns; they have been together for seven weeks were totally fine.

In the last two days, the larger of the clowns is probably trying to pair, but it is incredibly violent. The smaller clown has damage to just about all of his fins and has been hiding at the surface, almost jumping out of the water while being attacked. I'm worried the larger clown may kill the smaller of the two.

The other odd thing about this is that the larger of the two both attacks and does the weird submissive twitch, which I thought the males did.

I put the smaller one in an acclimation box to give him a break, but I want to now how long I should let this continue before I give away the mean one.

Wish I could be helpful but have the same problem. The two little clowns seemed fine for a couple weeks but in the last few days the slightly larger one has been violently attacking the smaller, shredding nearly all of his fins. He’s in an acclimation box now (in the same tank) but I have no idea how long to keep them separate before trying again. Hoping to learn more from folks who have been through this!

 

[Azedenkae]

The other odd thing about this is that the larger of the two both attacks and does the weird submissive twitch, which I thought the males did.

Super late reply, but I actually found an article that may be describing what you are observing: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10211-012-0142-0

From your pictures the size difference does not seem to be too prominent, so it might be the case whereby the larger clownfish is still transitioning to female.

According to that article, females will be super aggressive to females, and males aggressive to males but do this 'side-by-side' dance. I know the full situation is not the same, as here you have just two fish, and not a trio responding to 'intruders', but yeah, I wonder if it could be a combination of those behaviours, the larger clownfish trying to dominate the other clownfish, but at the same time they may still both be males and so the larger clownfish still display some 'male' behaviours.

Just a hypothesis.