How long do clowns fight before switching gender?

[Wayne]

Does anyone know roughly how long two occ clowns will fight before they determine gender? I just added another occ clown and its pretty clear which one is the more dominatant one. Just wondering how long the fighting will go on?

Also both of there genders are unknown at this time, they are both quite young and equal in size... I haven't seen them lock jaws yet, but is there any other way to tell?

[dsaundry]

Could go on for a few days or weeks, so long as there is lots of rock for the other one to hide, however, it may not happen. They may fight to the death. Just watch them as best as you can and usually they will aclimate to each other.

[Myka]

It can go on for months or days. Hard to say. Size difference between them will help shorten the time.

[Wayne]

Hum well after an hour the aggression has died down a little bit... The aggressor throws a jab in every few seconds still and the other one is just taking it. It was certainly a very scary hour, there was times the aggressor had is entire mouth biting the body of the other one :sad:

But like you guys say I can expect this behaviour for few more weeks possibly?

[Myka]

Ya, any chance you could trade the new guy for a bigger/smaller one? Introducing a second clown to an established clown you will get way more aggression than introducing them at the same time. Add to that they are both the same size...you're in for a battle.

[Wayne]

Ya, any chance you could trade the new guy for a bigger/smaller one? Introducing a second clown to an established clown you will get way more aggression than introducing them at the same time. Add to that they are both the same size...you're in for a battle.

I introduced them both to a 20G tank with some live rock. If the agression doesn't get better in the next few hours I will seperate them and get a smaller one :wink:

Thanks everyone for the help so far :lol:

[Wayne]

A update for anyone interested: Everything is all good with the "pair" of them :) The "male" is all healed up and they swim together all day long :lol:

Could not be happier with the results, but next time I will certainly do big with small to make for a more seamless transition.

[vaporize]

Used to believe it can go from months, but now I can tell you they can go for YEARS and not change. Don't know the reason, just observations from some of my pairs.

The one I thought it's a female (b/c it's very aggressive and beating up the smaller one), after 9 months, suddenly decided to kill the smaller 'male', then I throw her in with a much larger one. They paired up and the 'aggressive suppose-to-be' female (2.5") ended up being a male in that spawning relationship.

Some of my mated pair nowadays take 2+ yrs to finally accept each other too ... clowns are wierd things

[Wayne]

... clowns are wierd things

So true :mrgreen: