Help! Clownfish with bizarre behavior

[reefnotbeef]

I have two clownfish. One is thriving eating a lot and active. The other isn’t eating and acting bizarre. I will attach two pictures of each fish. Parameters are fine and this is confirmed by my LFS. I have tried pellets, flakes, and mysin. The fish will eat and spit out all above mentioned food.

This is the second time it’s happened. I had another with a similar issue and it passed before I can figure out what was wrong. I will attached a picture of the dead fish as well.

the healthy clown has been in the tank for nearly a month and the new unhealthy one has been in there for a week now.

Any feedback helps.

They all came from the same store and even the same tank.

 

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

Welcome to Reef2Reef!

I can’t really tell anything from the photos, sorry. Getting good photos is tough, blue lights makes it harder to see details.
It wasn’t clear to me - is the original clown spitting its food out also, or is it ok?
Mixing clowns can be difficult, did you see any chasing or bullying?
Jay

 

[reefnotbeef]

The original fish is doing great! The other mostly orange clown (the ones that passed) was displaying almost the same behavior as the one that I’m having problems with currently.

 

[reefnotbeef]

There are no spots on the fish or damages to their fins that I can’t tell.

 

[Deep]

when you add a second clownfish it is usually better if the second one is much smaller than the first one.

 

[reefnotbeef]

He is definitely smaller. Maybe by a 1/8-1/4 of an inch. They attempted to pair (danced/vibrated) the first day but nothing since. but the larger one has been bullying the other since then. I assumed this was normal, considering it’s the first week they have been with each other.
I was thinking it could be bad fish from my LFS and just got lucky with the healthy one.

 

[reefnotbeef]

Update: fish didn’t make it.

I came home yesterday and caught the bigger clown bullying the smaller. Bit his tail and dragged him like a shark. I had to break them up with my hand.

This morning I found the smaller one being eaten by my crabs. I was able to return the bully to my LFS. I figure the smaller one (RIP) wasn’t eating because he was stressed out and just trying to separate itself from the bigger one. For the not responding to the food I attribute that to him just trying to survive and avoid the larger one. Turns outs the larger one was a complete ****** bag. (I suspect)

picked up different two clowns today and they are doing so much better. I studied the LFS stock and made sure the larger one was more docile and didn’t display any agressive behavior to the others. It is the first day, but I will continue to update this thread.
I got a little breeder box (packaging calls it a hatchery box) today to put on the side of the tank and physically separate the two just in case it happens again.

 

[reefnotbeef]

update:

the smaller one is picking on the larger one. And the larger one is not fighting back. It is letting itself get bullied. You can definitely tell the smaller one is smaller. Has anyone ever ran into this issue?