Male/female clown fights

[Mrcote1]

Hello,
I feel as if my reef tank issues never end. Ive purchased 2 gladiator clowns roughly 2 months ago and they have been in qt this entire time. One is a black and white gladiator, the other is orange and white. The black and white gladiator is roughly an inch in size maybe slightly larger. The orange and white gladiator is larger by maybe 1/4". After the first 2 weeks both clowns were twitching at eachother nonstop. This happened for about a month peacefully. Then about 3 weeks ago they started fighting a little bit. And it slowly got worse to the point where they were getting slightly ripped fins. The black and white clown definitely backs off everytime and tries to avoid the orange clown. Occassionally they lock jaws but not often. Now when they fight the orange clown usually ends with twitching and the black clown does not twitch back. Do I have 2 females or just an aggressive orange clown thats establishing dominance? Ive done lots of reading online and cant come to a conclusion.

Thank you

 

[ZoWhat]

I'm not a clownfish scientist.....but I believe you have two slightly different species that you're trying get to mate up.

Clowns are damsels....and damsels are meaner than two redneck hillbillies and only one Pasbt Blue Ribbon beer left.

 

[Mrcote1]

Yea im starting to wish I only bought one clown. But im really hoping this is all part of the pairing process

 

[MTBake]

Doesn't sound too promising to me. Keep an eye on them.

I have a pair of clowns in an observation tank(10 gallon) for 3 months now. Almost 4. They don't lock jaws at all. Smaller one shows submission to the larger quite often. The larger one is growing at a faster rate as well. That tells me that he is letting her eat more

If it does turn out to be 2 females, perhaps you could trade someone for another clownfish. There's lots of cool varieties popping up these days. Just make sure it's from a stock tank with loads of clowns. Those are almost always males.

 

[Mrcote1]

So the black and white gladiator was kept alone most of its life i just found out. So it is almost certainly female. So unless the larger more aggressive fish is a male, or will stay a male which I doubt, then I guess I will be getting rid of one

 

[DaLilFishie]

my 2 darwin clowns were bout a inch when i bought them. they did fight initially to decide who was most dominant but it calmed down after a while. all clowns do that.