Mixing Clowns

[rosier1]

Hello everyone,

I have a 29 gallon biocube with a true percula clown, 6 line wrasse, and a firefish. The fish have been in there for about 3 months. I was wondering if I would be able to add another clown to the tank or do you think the older clown would pick on it. Also do I have to stick with percula or can I add another type of clown altogether.

 

Thanks

Craig

[Urchinhead]

You can add another clown. However you are going to see aggression on the part of your in tank clown because she has established her territory and is most likely morphed into a female.

 

To mitigate this risk there are a couple of things you are going to have to do. First is find a clown that is at least 1/3 her size if not smaller. Better to find one that is considered newly hatched as the odds are much greater that it hasn't sexed yet and by being smaller than the in tank clown it will sex to the male since your existing clown will dominate the new one easily.

 

Second is that if you are seeing allot of aggression from your first clown pull some of the rocks out and hold them in another bucket with power head and heater for 3 days if you want to keep the existing aquascape you have now or rearrange them in the tank if you don't. This 'resets' the clown's territory so there will be less aggression since your existing clown isn't defending her territory from a new clown.

 

You can cross species within limits. For example you could go a black false perc or something similar but to go to say a clarki or the like may be cause for problems down the road.

 

Lastly keep an eye on your wrasse. They can be aggressive as well.

[rosier1]

Thanks. I had no idea they decided on being male or female after birth.

[douglam]

Get a very small clown it will improve your chances. I floated mine in the bag for a while to see of the little one would start to twitch and surrender to the female soince I had Boone to separte them After opening the bag