Introducing a new clown

[Pennywise the Clown]

A couple of weeks ago I lost one of my clowns. I was gutted as this was the first fish that I introduced to my tank 14 months ago. I had a pair of clownfish though I'm sure that they never paired up. One lives in my hammer garden and the other lived in a mushroom, 12" apart. There was never any aggro between them and they lived happily in the display.

Today I introduced another ocellaris which was a lot smaller than the remaining clown, and I had to take it back to the LFS 10 minutes later. It was getting destroyed by the clown and my algae blenny was joining in too. The poor little thing would not have lasted much longer.

I know it is not necessary to have a pair of clowns but I would like to do this if possible.

What's the best way forward?

 

[Peace River]

You may want to try an acclimation box next time. Also putting a mesh container in the tank that the small clown can fit through the mesh but not the larger one has proven helpful. Good luck!

 

[TriggersAmuck]

If you have the clearance in your tank you can use egg crate like that found at Home Depot (https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=home+depot+egg+crate&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8) to create a mid tank divider, thus giving the new fish plenty of room to adapt. I have used this method many times when introducing fish which might not be received amicably at first.