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Ocellaris Clownfish Nipping Everything


horse_girl

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I purchased two black ocellaris clownfish earlier today and they're nipping everything in my tank, mostly the anemone. They've nipped at all of my snails, my coral frags, my red fromia star, liverock, etc.

Is this normal? These are my first clowns and I wasn't really sure what to expect behaviour wise.

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The only thing I have ever had clowns nip at is each other and any fish, crab or otherwise that got too close to their Nem. I have never seen a clown nip at coral but I have only been doing this for 3 years so I don't have a ton of time in the hobby.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Sorry for the late reply!

I'm pretty sure they are wild caught because when looking at the colour charts for black ocellaris clowns they match the wild colour pattern.

 

They did end up hosting in the anemone, they're actually super obsessive over it and will attack anything that goes near it. Their nipping behaviour stopped once they chose their host. Now the only nipping that takes place is when the female chases the male around or when they suck on the anemones tentacles.

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CronicReefer

Sorry for the late reply!

I'm pretty sure they are wild caught because when looking at the colour charts for black ocellaris clowns they match the wild colour pattern.

 

They did end up hosting in the anemone, they're actually super obsessive over it and will attack anything that goes near it. Their nipping behaviour stopped once they chose their host. Now the only nipping that takes place is when the female chases the male around or when they suck on the anemones tentacles.

Definitely sounds like wild clown behavior. The nipping is them acclimating themselves to the stinging cells of the anemone. They will probably start feeding your anemone pretty soon now that they have established it as their home.

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That would be really neat!

The female booted the male from the anemone since I last posted. There's been some fighting, mostly her attacking him. They're at kind of a stalemate now, with her staying with the anemone, and him on the opposite side of the rock so they don't have to see each other. They'll swim around together if I come up to the tank, but there's some fighting during feeding. I'm assuming this is happening because they're just reaching sexual maturity and the soon to be female is trying to establish her dominance to keep her position until she switches to female.

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