Lightning Maroon Clownfish Pico Harem! RBTA Instant tank.

andrewkw · Oct 24, 2020

I have been breeding maroon clownfish the last couple of months. I've been having a hard time with aggression. Examples include 2 in a 5 gallon tank tearing each others fins to 54 in a 10 gallon tank with just a couple of gallons of water, which initially were doing great but went on a crazy purge over a day and most of them killed each other off. I just picked up four 2 gallon tanks so I decided to try this with the survivors. There are 8 maroons in this 8x8x8 cube along with 2 RBTA's. There is a small utility pump at the bottom and a tiny heater. I have this on my table which I culture phytoplankton and have a random 10 gallon tank behind them. Since this is just 2 gallons this tank took all of 2 minutes to setup. One piece of live rock with the 2 anemones.

Since I have 4 of these tanks I plan on drilling them and connecting them eventually, but for the time being I figured why not try one out like this. I am picking up a 50 gallon tank tomorrow to use for grow out in addition to 10 and 5 gallon tanks I have for fry.

Unfortunately none of the clowns were in the anemones when I took these pictures, but they have used them. I just set this up late night and no one got sucked into the pump (which is turned down really low) or beaten to death. When I actually get these tanks setup I will probably use them to house the really nice patterned ones. The ones in here now are just the tattered survivors from the crazy group.

Miguel Negron · Oct 24, 2020

Beautiful nano

TriggerFinger · Oct 24, 2020

I was surprised to read about the aggression so early on. I hope this works out! The tiny tank looks really nice with the nems!
At what size/age are they ready for new homes?

brandon429 · Oct 24, 2020

I'm on top of a large mountain in nm called Sierra Blanca and my signal is low, the page will only load the description and one half of the pics, from the top. Then freezes

this is clearly professional pico reefing for the half i can see, can't wait to see the other half in 48 hours

brandon429 · Oct 26, 2020

looking very sharp how's it coming along now

anemones looking sharp above very happy

andrewkw · Oct 26, 2020

brandon429 said:
looking very sharp how's it coming along now

anemones looking sharp above very happy

So far so good. Anemones have deflated and inflated again. I was a little concerned these clowns would get chopped up in the pump but that hasn't happened yet. As mentioned these were survivors from a massive purge like fight so many do have torn fins which still function fine swimming in the current.

All my other baby maroons just have air pumps but it seems like they can handle a decent amount of flow at a young age. They do grow very slow so these guys will stay in until fighting gets bad again or they reach a decent size whichever comes first, but I suspect it will be the fighting.

I have 4 of these cubes which I'm going to try and setup nicely but first I have another clownfish growout system to complete so it probably won't be for a month or 2, but they are so small I can drop them anywhere fill them with water and move them again later...