Advice needed: Clown Fish issue

[Mahawka]

Advice needed Clown Fish

I have a situation where my clown fish has been fighting for 24 hours now. Just some background information. Clown 1 has been in my tank for about 1 month (alone). He/she is about 6-9 months old and has hosted in my RBTA.
1 month later I introduced a 2nd clown fish to the 10 gallon nano. Clown 2 is about the same age and about the same size as clown1. At first the 2 fish were getting along well. They would swim together but sleep separately. Clown1 would go back in his RBTA at night and clown2 would sleep beside the heater. I did not see any fighting or aggression from the two.

After work one day (about 1 week later after clown2 was introduced), to my surprise I see clown 2 in the RBTA and chasing clown 1 away. As the day progressed the fighting became worse. Clown 1 would repeatedly dash in to the RBTA but clown 2 would chase him out. During this process I can see clown 2 being the more dominant one. Clown 2 is doing all the nibbling where as clown 1 is just trying to go back to his RBTA. This process has been going on for about 24 hours. Clown 1 looks exhausted and breathing really heavily. No one is doing a submissive twitch.

What do you guys think ? Is this normal? are they just pairing up ? or is this more of a territorial thing?
Should I leave the clowns in the tank ? or maybe remove one?


Thanks !

[Cujo#31]

OOOH. Clowns dont so so well same or similar species in small system fer sher. Most important is remove submissive clown or it will wind up dead. If they did not come as a pair, pairing up can be a crap shoot. If system is big enough u will need to find a seperate host but they need tons of realestate between each other. Right now one sees other as threat to territory and they will not let up.

[trilinearmipmap]

Assuming they are the same species (you didn't mention it). One option would be to put some good hiding places in the tank (such as a couple of PVC T's) so that clown #1 could get away from clown #2 if he/she is attacked. Hard to say from your description, more likely clown #1 would be female if you had her alone for so long, and if clown #2 is beating up clown #1, more likely clown #2 is also female. However they could just be working out their marital difficulties. Depending on the level of violence you could removed one of the clowns or just make sure there is adequate shelter to protect clown #1.

[Mahawka]

thanks for the replies.

They are both ocellaris clowns. Clown #2 is 100% male due to his history.
There are plenty of places to hind in my tank atm.
Clown 2 only attacks clown 1 when he is near the RBTA. Clown 2 will never attack unless clown 1 dashes in to the RBTA. But strange enough clown 1 keeps going back for more.

Clown 1 is doing a weird twitch. Not a regular seizure one (in one spot). But like full on twitching few inches in random directions.

[Madreefer]

It's normal behaviour. Same as the twitching. I had a mating pair of clowns, the female died and I replaced her. The male than turned in to a female and I now have another mating pair. This is on a fairly large tank and I have no nano tank experience. Good luck

[Mahawka]

Just a quick update.

The clowns are not as aggressive now. They are both sharing the same anemone at night. However, there are still some aggression. They dash at each other alot, and push each other around. Their fins are still intact and no tear.

Any thoughts? I feel like I am on the right track.