Aggressive Percula Clown

[jsolomon]

I am new to this hobby of salt water tank keeping. I have a 92 Gallon tank right now with about 150 lbs of rock and 3 percula clowns. I started with one because thats what the store advised, and then added the other two fish three weeks later. The fish have been in the tank together for two weeks now and yesterday I noticed that one of the newer ones looks like he has been picked on (His gills look like that have been picked at). I noticed the original fish tends to be alot more aggresive than the other two fish. He will charge the other two for no particular reason. Is there anything I can do to calm him down or prevent him from going after the other two? Any help would be more than greatly appreciated. Thanks.

 

[josh]

Hi,
I can offer one possible solution. Rearrange your rock if you can. This will disrupt the territories of the clown and put things back on a more even playing field. However, I know rearranging my rock would take some time. Just an option.
HTH
-Josh-

 

[ocellaris_keeper]

Here's the good news - your clowns are in the process of a dominance hierarchy, the most dominant will be the female.
The bad news - one of those guys will not make the grade (you already know who it is) take him back to the LPS for a refund.
After about 4 days add some other fish to the tank and your ready to go. I would recommend that you try to pick mild fish as your percs will probably mate within a year.

 

[jsolomon]

The three fish right now are all the same size. One thing I noticed, is the one that gets picked on the most has alot less black coloring than the other two. I dont know if this even has anything to do with it, just something I noticed.

 

[fshhub]

do you mean he hads a finer black stripes, you amy even have a mix of false perculas and true perculas, that is the easiest way ot distinguish between them, the true percs have bolder black stripes, this too could also be part of your proble, since clowns don't generally take to mixing well

 

[jsolomon]

Its exactly that. The one has much finer black lines. The two that stick together have very dark defined black lines on them. This is weird because these 3 fish all came out of the same tank at the fish store. The 2 new ones used to stick together but now its the original one and one of the new ones that stick together and the one with finer black lines is left out. Is the one with the finer black lines the one I should bring back to the fish store? Thanks again for all the help.