would that advice still be good for the OP with their 20g tank though?
Imo the tank size is not a problem. I keep a larger pair (polymnus) in a smaller tank and they love it. Ofc. they had that period with the dominant relentlessly chasing the subdominant but they figured it out, and learned to get along famously.
yeah I’m just wondering when i would need to actually step in, i know that sometimes the pairs don’t work out and the female will kill the male, so if that’s gonna happen, I’d rather intervene
Fish are, very angry creatures.
When the smaller one seems to get tired or tattered, giving it a break to recover is a good idea. It is just chasing and it does cause the smaller fish both exhaustion and bruises. While in nature the weaker fish could swim away when it needed a break, in our aquariums the stress of not being able to get away, can kill it. When a fish feels stress, its body is affected for 12 hours afterwards.
Being unable to swim away and catch a break, is what kills a lot of clowns in the bully-stage of clownfish courtship.
They beat themselves silly. Sometimes to the death or til one jumps out. Then they bond or the president calls a truce and everybody's good like my tank.
+ one to this. Fish lack humane instincts, so for human observers, they seem to act very cruel but it is just the way fish act.
When a fish is actually trying to kill another fish, they do stuff like nip at the fins until there is only stumps left. The clownfish courtship bully-stage is just a big stress factor for the future male of the pair, and fish can easily die from stress.
what do you think of the picture of the orange clown on page 1? Is that torn up badly or just moderately? He’s still eating and everything, just being bullied to no tomorrow lol
Imo it's moderate. Enough to give the fish a break but not enough to consider returning the fish to the LFS.
In all honesty to me he doesn't look that bad. Mine would tear each other up and then the female grew and kicked the male's butt up and down that tank. He lived in a 4" square area behind a flow pump for like two months. Came out to grab a food pellet when she wasn't looking and got his butt kicked for doing it. Now they are perfect couple. She tells him what to do and he does it. Case closed
That is a great explanation of how the development goes.
The stronger fish will bully the weaker one to trigger the hormone developments. And when the future female have had time to go through growth bursts while the future male is stunted, they start to develop the adult clownfish relationship. From what I have read, it takes 2 years for clownfish to reach sexual maturity, so what we see in our tanks when we introduce juvie clowns, can be seen more or less like teenagers fighting over who is going to be the boss in the relationship.
Being humans, it is upsetting to see the inhumane behaviour of fish but it is how their relationships are supposed to develop. It is a stage that passes and OPs setup seems to just need a little more time until the clowns settle down.
