Pair maroon clownfish

Nathan80 · Dec 29, 2019

Hi,
I'm hoping someone can offer some advice on this - I have (had) a pair of maroon clowns - they were fine, hosting the nem etc, I went away for a few days for the holidays, came back yesterday - the male didn't look good and now he's dropped dead annoyingly, no obvious reason and everything else in the tank is fine.

I know when my LFS first got them in she was a really feisty so and so and it took them a couple of months to get her to accept a mate properly - so I'm not expecting this to be easy!

What's people's advice on trying to get her to pair up with another male? Given the challenge the LFS had is it worth even trying or should I rehome her and go for another pair that are already paired up? (I'd rather not have to rehome her as she is spectacular.)

She's about 2.3-3" long, so still not full grown I would say.

Any new male will have to go through quarantine, on the plus side I do have plenty of spare tanks so splitting something like a 20 gallon tank in half temporarily with mesh in between them isn't an issue to get them used to each other.

I'm hoping someone with experience of maroon's can offer some pearls of wisdom and experience!

Thanks
Nathan

AC1211 · Dec 29, 2019

Nathan80 said:
Hi,
I'm hoping someone can offer some advice on this - I have (had) a pair of maroon clowns - they were fine, hosting the nem etc, I went away for a few days for the holidays, came back yesterday - the male didn't look good and now he's dropped dead annoyingly, no obvious reason and everything else in the tank is fine.

I know when my LFS first got them in she was a really feisty so and so and it took them a couple of months to get her to accept a mate properly - so I'm not expecting this to be easy!

What's people's advice on trying to get her to pair up with another male? Given the challenge the LFS had is it worth even trying or should I rehome her and go for another pair that are already paired up? (I'd rather not have to rehome her as she is spectacular.)

She's about 2.3-3" long, so still not full grown I would say.

Any new male will have to go through quarantine, on the plus side I do have plenty of spare tanks so splitting something like a 20 gallon tank in half temporarily with mesh in between them isn't an issue to get them used to each other.

I'm hoping someone with experience of maroon's can offer some pearls of wisdom and experience!

Thanks
Nathan

I have no experience with maroons the only clowns I have are ocellaris and any two of them usually work fine but I know from my time keeping aggressive freshwater cichlids that if I had a mean male thst would kill small females I would either rehome it or get a fish bigger than it in the tank.

Nathan80 · Dec 29, 2019

I wish it were as simple as pairing up ocellaris! I've paired them up no problem before. I used to keep a lot of cichlds as well - particulalry malawis. For maroon clowns read something like melanchromis auratus (the beautiful baddies of lake malawi) - they're really aggressive little so and so's - but they are spectacular! The ones I have she is maroon with yellow bars with what I can only describe as small 'electric blue lines' either side of each bar which is one of the reasons I'm so desparate to try and re-pair her up.

AC1211 · Dec 29, 2019

Nathan80 said:
I wish it were as simple as pairing up ocellaris! I've paired them up no problem before. I used to keep a lot of cichlds as well - particulalry malawis. For maroon clowns read something like melanchromis auratus (the beautiful baddies of lake malawi) - they're really aggressive little so and so's - but they are spectacular! The ones I have she is maroon with yellow bars with what I can only describe as small 'electric blue lines' either side of each bar which is one of the reasons I'm so desparate to try and re-pair her up.

With the melanochromis genus my trick was simple hiding places and a large open water herbivor so I kept them with fully grown common plecs and oscars that scared them into hiding perhaps a purple tang is in order....