Male clown SHOULD stay male?!?

RiaanP

Moderator
Joined
11 Aug 2008
Posts
26,759
Reaction score
2,452
Location
Centurion
I got a pair of ocellaris clowns that's been together for many years. Living together in a TL550 very happily, until yesterday.

The female suddenly become very aggressive towards the male chasing him to the one spot above a powerhead she just could not fit in as well. Powerhead sits high up and he had to lie on his side almost exposed on top of it to be out of her reach. After full day harassment I eventually took him out and put him in my QT tank.

I know males SHOULD stay male in the presence of a dominant female. But this rule is now broken.

They were a very interesting pair. The male being rather big as far as males goes. He is only slightly smaller than the female. So close that you had to watch their behaviors to be sure. Always been a big boy.

In my other tanks I do have 2 other pairs, with no issues.

Anybody else ever experienced a long term bonded pair suddenly having a breakup?
 
It happens to my pairs very regularly to start fighting, but it will stop after a day or two, if they are well fed and water is good they should settle soon,
In your case, if the male is fighting back then it is wanting to be dominant, but if its just sitting and take the hit, i don't think its gonna be an issue,
is the fins damaged on the male or not? if the fins are not badly damages, then i wouldn't worry, but if there are very visible damages, then i will take action.
When i want to introduce a male to a female, i normally keep the male in a clear container with holes in it in the same chamber as the female for a few days,
And i slowly introduce them, so maybe you can try this and see what happens
 
Last edited:
[sjw ] Did you just assume its gender? :p [ / swj]

I never had this happen to the two pairs that I have. The one pair is almost similar in size to each other so will be interesting to see if the male also decides to gender bend at a later stage.
 
Are all these tanks with different clowns connected?
Yes and no.
The TL550 is connected to my 3.2m tank.
The bickering pair house is the TL550. Another pair of clowns is in the 3.2. Male is smaller than female. Living on the left. On the right hand side there is a pair of skunk clowns.

The last pair ocellaris clowns is in the Nanocube / TL450. Bought the pair together in 2013 and the male is far smaller than the female.

It happens to my pairs very regularly to start fighting, but it will stop after a day or two,
Will put the male back tonight in a glass holding chamber. Separated from female and see how it goes. Would be a pity to swap him out.
 
Did you just assume its gender? :p

Not sure anymore, nowadays people identify with so many genders... Seems the clowns got the same issue. Although male-to-female or female-to-male transitions in fish is a natural phenomenon. Not so natural in humans... And do not google human transitions, definitely not while at work. Big NSFW warning.
 
Hmm, wonder if the connected tanks doesn't spread hormones or pheromones between the two pairs affecting the clown pair. Just speculation, haven't read up on it, but in wild clowns occur in nennies in bigger numbers than 2, so must be some chemicals released by female to keep the rest male, maybe it becomes confusing if more than 2 pairs of chemicals are in system, but no real clue.
 
maybe it becomes confusing if more than 2 pairs of chemicals are in system, but no real clue.
might be.
Although the total volume is big enough to prevent it, well that is what I thought. Total volume close to 2000L. OK, not using carbon.

In the wild you can get several clowns in same anemone. One female, one dominant male and a lot of other smaller sub males.
 
Although connected tanks were used previously by breeders, and that is where they noticed for the first time cross breeding of clowns, where they speculate sperm from a male in one tank reached the eggs in the other neighboring tank. So there you had 2 breeding pairs of clowns spawning at the same time.
 
I can definitely relate to this. The same thing transpired in my tank with my pair of black ice clowns. I had them for roughly two years and they were purchased from a follow forum member who had them for more than 3 years. They were paired when I bought them an settled in to my display in perfect harmony. For no apparent reason the female turned aggressive toward to the male. This escalated over a three day period to the point to the male was on his last breathe and showing signs of ich. I promptly moved him to my nano, which was empty at the time, for a month where he recovered nicely. I then moved the female over to the nano and after a day or two of squabbling they settled down in the nano where I left them for a month. I figured it may have been erratic behaviour since they now seemed to have paired up again so I moved the pair back to my DT, only to find that the exact same thing happened after 3 weeks. Once again I had to move the male to my nano and after a month added the female. They seemed to have settled down in my nano after two days so I removed the egg crate lid after day three only to find my male had jumped out the tank that evening. I’m under no uncertainty that this was a result of the female chasing him.

To this day I have no idea what sparked this behaviour. The female was considerably bigger and they both hosted the same anemone. After much online reading I was still unable to ascertain what happened.
 
Back
Top Bottom