Adding a new clown after losing one

mrbacony · Mar 8, 2023

I have a male / female pair of clownfish that I have had for nearly 2 years. Sadly, today, the male passed away. Not sure what was going on. There were no obvious signs of issues with him.
But my question is, can I add another clown with the female even though she had been with another clown for so long? Should I get one significantly smaller than her? She is a pretty good sized fish. Much larger than my male.
I have a 130 gallon tank that is fairly mature.

i cant think · Mar 9, 2023

mrbacony said:
I have a male / female pair of clownfish that I have had for nearly 2 years. Sadly, today, the male passed away. Not sure what was going on. There were no obvious signs of issues with him.
But my question is, can I add another clown with the female even though she had been with another clown for so long? Should I get one significantly smaller than her? She is a pretty good sized fish. Much larger than my male.
I have a 130 gallon tank that is fairly mature.

I’ve found females tend to kill the males depending on the species. I know the hybrids tend to be hard to pair with others and so are Percula clowns.
I had a pair in a 100G tank and the female killed the males after a while of being together.

mrbacony · Mar 9, 2023

It is interesting you say that. The male was kind of hanging out at the bottom. Looking a little sick. The female kept coming over to him and pushing and pushing on him. I thought she was trying to encourage him, but it sounds like she was attacking him. Very strange since they’ve been together for so long

Shon · Mar 9, 2023

We had a pair of maroons that came with the 75g Fowler gifted to us. Big momma passed years later and lil dude became the new (not as) big momma after a few months. We got a new lil "lightning" dude and she accepted him within hours. She'd swim at him, pause, he would shake and she would slowly swim back to her cave. Took a while for him to follow. New big momma became aggressive to other fish immediately though, backing into and slapping her tail at anyone near the cave. Only the oscellated dragonet could care less. Everyone else stayed away.