That's awesome. 17 years is a long time to wait, haha.
My female ocellaris right now was the male of the original pair that I bought ... in 1998.
About a year and a half ago I inherited a second pair of patterned ocellaris (I don't know the variety, snowflake or whatever) from a friend shutting his tank down. I was sort of hoping the two pair would get along by basically setting up shop on either ends of the tank (or I'd rehome them or whatever). But what's happened is the male of the new pair introduced himself into the original pair, making it a group of 3 ("sharem"?). I have two gigantea carpets in the tank and basically each male associates to one of them, and my 20 year old female bounces back and forth between them, alternating back and forth egg laying sites. "Ok now it's your turn."
The spurned female from the old tank just chills out and basically stays away from them. I want to feel kinda sad for her, but OTOH she seems to prefer the single life.