Coral beauty and female clown "cat fight"

The last 2 days, we’ve noticed torn fins on the coral beauty, first on the bottom fin, then yesterday the tail. She was fine when I left the house yesterday for about 2 hours and when I came home, the chunk was missing from her tail. My female oscillaris clown has been picking at my blenny also – I caught her doing that. The coral beauty seems fine, eats fine, is swimming around picking at the rocks right now. Last night, I saw the coral beauty and female clown get into a brawl! They were really going at it. Now, the female clown has a chunk missing from her top fin.

I basically have 4 “swimming” fish in a 46G BF – 2 oscillaris clowns, six-line wrasse, coral beauty. I have a watchman goby, who is mostly underground. I also have the small blenny. We’ve had these same fish for 3 months now with no problems – never an incident until we noticed the blenny being nipped. The water parameters are fine, the fish are eating fine, and nothing else has changed. I just don’t know why the clown and beauty have decided to duke it out now. I’m worried that one or both of them will get stressed and get sick. I feed a mixture of Rod’s, spirulina loaded mysis shrimp, brine shrimp, and all also occasional algae clips. The coral beauty mostly picks at the rocks, but she really goes for the Rod’s or the mysis/brine shrimp.

I read something about spawning clowns becoming more aggressive, but this clown has turned into the spawn of Satan here recently!! Should I put the clowns in the QT for a bit? I can’t figure out why everybody got along fine for 3 months, and then boom! Also, this morning the coral beauty has been coming up to the female clown and kind of swimming sideways at her, like “don’t mess with me.” Anybody have any ideas, suggestions? Will they make nice since the coral beauty finally took a chunk out of the clown?

 

My female osc clown has been very mean to my fish lately. Tearing up fins on my Royal Gramma and firefish.

My blenny jumped to a suicidal death the other night and I'm convinced that was caused by the clown being a PITA.


I think I'm going to try to give them to an LFS for credit. I've had these clowns forever but I'm tired of them. They (the clown pair) eat all the food before anything else can get it too. Which just makes matters worse.

 

I've been watching them on and off, and the clown is acting on her best behavior today. She hasn't made a single aggressive move towards the coral beauty. If fact, the CB has been following the clown around (both clowns, in fact). She swims up to them sideways and kind of cuts her eyes at them. The clowns have backed away every time. I hope that duking it out and taking a chunk out of the clown put her in her place. I can't handle tank squabbles!

K for your blenny. Our blenny gets picked on a lot. I finally put a small conch shell in the tank that Jwin found scuba diving recently. The blenny ducks down behind the shell and nobody can get to him. If he'd just learn to stay down there during the daytime! He's king of the rocks at night - he runs all over the place while everybody else is sleeping.

 

I would just give it time. Could be that the angel decided it wants to take a run at the clowns territory. They will sort it out. As for feeding, make sure you are feeding the angel an angel specific diet that is fortified with marine sponges. If your not, it could just be a case of fin rot, which can happen very quickly.

 

Blenny's are known jumpers. They can and will jump regardless of the other fishes behavior. Mine did it three times before finally meeting his doom. If you have a blenny and an open top it's just a matter of time.

 

This is just an "update" to last week. The coral beauty looks much better and the fins are growing back nicely. I went back and forth in my head if this was fin rot or just torn fins from fighting. I feed a combination of Rod's/mysis or brine shrimp/Ocean Nutrition Formula Two (for angels) and add algae clips. Since the diet hasn't changed, the CB's eating habits haven't changed, and the fins are healing up fast, I'm guessing it was the cat fight between the CB and the female clown. The clown has been on her best behavior lately also - I think the CB set her straight - so all is well in the tank!