Clownfish = upset corals

[EMarie]

I have had my clownfish for just over a year and I believe that they are developing into female/male roles. Unfortunately, they have been fighting for months (3+). There is one obvious larger more dominant one, I call Bobo and the smaller, I call Krusty. There is minor damage to Krusty's mouth on a regular basis but their overall health is excellent. The problem is that with Bobo and Krusty fighting all the time, the corals are suffering. The pink goni in the picture was double the size before all this chaos the other corals are constantly closing when getting smacked into by the clowns. I have read that the fighting is normal for a period of time and then they will figure out their roles but I am getting impatient and worried that this might just be their new "personalities." Should I re-home one or both? Thanks.

 

The tank is an IM20

Sorry for the poor pic quality, I just wanted to include it for reference.

[j.falk]

If you have a favorite, re home one of them and enjoy the one by itself.

 

If you want a pair, re home both and try again with 2 baby clowns or re home one and try again by adding another smaller clown to the tank.

 

Damage to the face is serious fighting...it doesn't usually end until one of them are dead...either by fighting to the death or one getting an infection in the damaged parts.

[Leo_ian]

are they both the same size? if so rehome one of them. This is why i dont like clownfish. I was going to rehome mine but my sister offered to take them over, so now they live in a small nano with macros

[EMarie]

Thanks for the advice. That is kinda what I was thinking. The one fish is slightly larger than the other but I think that they maybe too close in size at this point. I guess I was hoping that they would sort it out and be less hostile over time. 

[EMarie]

I wanted to update this post:

After a water change, I stuck a net into the tank to try to capture one of the clowns and move it to my 5 gallon hospital tank but they both hid and wouldn't come out for hours. It was the strangest thing. Then there was a bunch of things that went wrong ... The corals were really unhappy and I couldn't figure out why and the fish were not eating, turns out the temp had dropped down to 68 degrees because I had forgotten to plug the heater back in. Well now Bobo and Krusty are getting along just fine. Turns out that they bonded over their near death experience.

 

**The good news is that there were no coral deaths and the tank is back to normal and I will be extra careful in the future to make sure that I check temp daily.

[EMarie]

Another update:

Nearly a year later and the troubles for the pair were clearly not worked out. What I noticed is that the female would model the submission dance and the male would refuse to submit. The reason for this update is that the smaller fish, Krusty, is missing. I noticed particularly aggressive behaviour over the past week and now one has been missing for 2 days. I think that he was probably killed by the female and then dragged into the shrimp den or taken by the crab 😞 or maybe he was trying to hide and is stuck in the rocks :S.