Oops - won't do that again. . .

Our black clownfish recently died, leaving our almost 2" orange true percula as the only clown. They never really bonded, and we've only had the orange true about a month, so I figured we would get her (it probably, but we consider her a "her") a friend. After looking around and only finding rather large clowns, we found some cute little ones at our LFS. Our fish are very docile, so we thought maybe we could add a little guy - probably about 3/4" - to the bunch. I should have known when he didn't want to leave the bag after acclimation that there was a problem. He would swim out of the bag, turn around and hightail it back in. The bigger clown was very interested and chased him into the bag. Once the little guy was in the tank, the bigger clown would rush him and then swim away. It then escalated to head bumping him. He just ran. Next the rotten *#!* actually grabbed his tail and started dragging him around the tank. I stuck my hand in the tank to get her to let him go. A minute later she actually grabbed onto his body!!! Needless to say, my 19 year old daughter and I were freaking out and I couldn't get the net fast enough. I had to flip that clown with my finger to get her to let him go. Luckily he was not injured, and he is now swimming happily in our refugium until he goes back to the LFS!

Moral of the story - never put anything into your tank as a pet that may be mistaken as food????

 

Thats wierd, you did it the right way, which is to introduce a smaller clown into the tank. I added a second clown about a yr ago into a tank that had a 9 yr old clown and they hit it off great. They havent mated yet, but they do their clown dance. Are they the same family clown fish? Try introducing him at night when the lights are off. Luna

BTW, sorry about your loss.

 

Yea clowns are tough - I had an experience with 2 perculas where they got along well when they were very young and within a few months, they turned on each other to the point that I had to get rid of one as well.

 

Hi Luna. Yes, they are the same family, which I thought was a good thing. I'm thinking the new guy was just too small. It was pretty strange - the larger clown has been a sweetheart since we got it and doesn't even nip at anyone. It got along just fine with our black clown although they didn't hang out a lot. When the little guy went into the tank he wiggled up a storm, but she just grabbed him and took him for the ride of his life. Freaked us girls right out - thought it was a mini "jaws." We put a new sailfin tang in the tank, and the clown didn't even look at it twice. Go figure