black pair with orange pair question

[dallas612]

i already have a pair of black clowns in my 90 gallon corner bowfront tank. i have around 200 pounds of live rock and multiple corals with only 3 other fish (emperor goby, red scooter dragonet, and 1 green cromis) and all is well with no aggression. i have in my quarentine 2 tank bred orange clowns that i am planning on adding to this tank in one month and i am hoping that i can get some advice from you guys that have tried, read, or believe that this will or will not work. i guess i am leaving it up to you all to either convince me that this can work or convince me that i am putting these new fish in danger if i go through with my plan of having two pairs of clowns. i have one month to decide so please add your thoughts and facts in your replys and all will be read and considered before my final decision. i would sure love having the best of both worlds being that i love the look of both the black and the "nemo" style clowns but i dont want any dead fish!

 

[nybutterfly03]

I would recommend watching them VERY closely if u do decide to do this. That is what I did when I added my orange clowns.
I had 3 b&w's and I added 2 o&w's....I moved around all my rocks so that the B&W's didnt have "their spots" anymore so everyone had to find new "territories" which I think helped.
Make sure the O&W clowns are at least the same size as the B&W's in not bigger.
Currently I have my 75 divided as my B&W's are too small to be with the O&W's......but sometimes I will catch the lil b&w's harassing the o&w's!!! I still dont know how they get thru the divider! lil stinkers

 

[reefmate75]

ive had O&W percs with maroons, they where fine together, i will have to say that the ones already in your tank will harass the new comers for a few days after that they should be fine, if you see them both fighting together then in my experience pull the less dominate out and put him back in the QT and replace at a later time when hes healed, any time you are mixing any clowns you are putting them in danger, but it can be done with time and patients, just becuase they will fight dosent mean you shouldnt put them together, clowns will always fight at first as they have to establish the hierarchy, its not that they mean to be mean its that they are wiered to have a direct line of whos boss kinda like the military hahaha, my 2 big maroons will work as a team, its kinda funny, if i put a rock somewhere and my female dosent like it, she will go find her mate and its odd but i think shes telling him she needs his help becuase after she gose finds him they both come back fairly fast and shell start pushing at the rock and hell ram it hard to move it these 2 have moved rock that are a few pounds, and im sure if they cant move it they would find a way like digging the sand out away from the base of the rock and then tring again, they are smart fish, and belive it or not when i put the female in with my male she put him on a resparator, he didnt have any fins left, 1 of his gills where torn, and his mouth was dislocated, he looks normal now after 4 months of recovry and they are a breeding pair now, so just becuase they fight at frist dosent mean they will never get along
now people are going to flame me again hahaha, im saing this with experiance, but people dont like that i would purpusly put fish in harms way for the sake of haveing them together, i understand their feelings, and they in many ways are right, but with clowns i do not let anyone tell me im wrong by mixing them, i might not arguee with them but they will not change my mind on the subject of mixing clowns or putting 2 together, ive experimented and i belive it is the way i have said it in many posts soooo let the flameing BEGAIN hah

 

[dallas612]

i really expected more people to jump in on this...............ttt

 

[dallas612]

so say that my b/w pair do harass my o/w. you say in a couple of days they will cool off? and in a system with 4 clowns of whatever color i am under the impression that there will be only one pair..........female, dominant mail, then the two followers. could the two new fish pair up having 2 females and it not end in disaster? or could the current pair split for one of the new fish? i am only asking so that i can be prepared for whatever happens.
btw, keep voting because i really want to know what everyone thinks my chances are of this working out!!!!! and i will keep everyone posted on the progress and maybe throw in some vids when the fish work out their behaviors.

 

[dallas612]

i guess all of you "experts" with thousands of post could care less about this topic huh? thanks for those who did take the time for me and for those who didn't, why??? cant be that touchy of a subject. i asked that you all talk me out of it! well if i seem a little disappointed thats because i did expect more from the "experts" and the know it alls. i guess you all would rather get on guys about their mistakes than try and prevent one huh. isn't someone going to ask me my levels or something lol. oh well....................

party:

 

[yerboy]

Originally Posted by dallas612
http:///forum/post/2486797
so say that my b/w pair do harass my o/w. you say in a couple of days they will cool off? and in a system with 4 clowns of whatever color i am under the impression that there will be only one pair..........female, dominant mail, then the two followers. could the two new fish pair up having 2 females and it not end in disaster? or could the current pair split for one of the new fish? i am only asking so that i can be prepared for whatever happens.
btw, keep voting because i really want to know what everyone thinks my chances are of this working out!!!!! and i will keep everyone posted on the progress and maybe throw in some vids when the fish work out their behaviors.
Im pretty sure the B&Ws are just a color morph of the Ocellaris "false percs" family so you will essentially have 4 of the same fish in the tank that will lead to only 1 female 1 male and 2 non sexually mature clowns.
my advice would be to not mix them up.

 

[h2ointolerant]

dallas if you have not done this yet i would not do it.i have a b&w pair and o&w pair and im probably going to end up having to dividing the tank at some point. it was fine when there were 3 but the addition of the 4th clown is touch and go right now.i have always wanted the b&w's and couldn't resist even though i know better stupid me.as of now there at opposite ends of the tank and things are going better but the potential for disaster is there.if you want to take a peaceful reef and turn it into the streets of L.A the cripps against the bloods like i did then do it,but you better be willing to be a L.A cop and intervene. i will keep you posted on how it goes.

 

[dallas612]

disaster strikes..........my 3 year old nephew dumps the whole container of flakes into the qt and i tried to get it all out. it was late so no water change could have been done being that i buy my premixed water from the pet store. i decided to save their lives and put them in the dt being that they were under qt for over 2 weeks with no signs of ich or any thing else. i checked the levels in the foggy qt and the ammonia was off the charts so i think i did the right thing. there is a little bit of bossing around from the smaller black clown to the bigger orange but things dont seem as bad as i expected reading the replys. they all have even been together for short periods of time without any nipping so hopefully they established the chain of command for the most part and i can make the decision to either keep the tank as is or pull the orange clowns. i do have a sump for a short stay if things get bad and i am on vacation from work all week so i will be watching closely. ill keep posting the progress in this thread.

 

[chrgerondavins]

Originally Posted by dallas612
http:///forum/post/2487867
disaster strikes..........my 3 year old nephew dumps the whole container of flakes into the qt and i tried to get it all out. it was late so no water change could have been done being that i buy my premixed water from the pet store. i decided to save their lives and put them in the dt being that they were under qt for over 2 weeks with no signs of ich or any thing else. i checked the levels in the foggy qt and the ammonia was off the charts so i think i did the right thing. there is a little bit of bossing around from the smaller black clown to the bigger orange but things dont seem as bad as i expected reading the replys. they all have even been together for short periods of time without any nipping so hopefully they established the chain of command for the most part and i can make the decision to either keep the tank as is or pull the orange clowns. i do have a sump for a short stay if things get bad and i am on vacation from work all week so i will be watching closely. ill keep posting the progress in this thread.
Well, I have 1 percula and 3 ocellaris in one tank, and i bought 2 seperate maroon clowns, NOT paired, they fought for about 48 hours off and on, and now are a pair.

 

[dallas612]

i hope to have the success that you did chrger!

 

[michaelf1478]

this past friday i got a maroon clown very pretty fish, put him in and my black and white stripe damsel starting beating it up so i got all my rock moved it to one side of the tank and got the damsel out. The next day my wife and i were at another local fish store and she saw a tomoto clown she really liked. i told her the maroon clown whould probably mess with it asked the lady at the fish store she said the same then i remembered i moved all the rock around and there was no territory established so i said ok we will try it and if they fought i whould bring one back. i put the tomoto in last night let him sit in the bag and the maroon stared him down i told my wife here come the fight i released it and watched the maroon swam up to him and i havent seen the apart much since its like they are best friends. so as of now mixing is working for me i hope it stays that way.

 

[dallas612]

well, its been a few days and i dont see any fighting anymore but my orange clowns stay put, one in each corner while my black clowns just roam the middle but at night i sometimes see the smaller black clown kinda hanging out with one of the orange ones instead of sleeping in the top corner with the black female like he use to. just when i think that my black pair may have "broke up" i see them together like glue again. during feeding its every fish for himself without any aggression and then back to the "normal" positions. i hope in the next few days that the orange clowns start swimming around the tank more because i like them and want to keep them but not at the cost of them just hanging out in the front corners all day. i dont see any flaws on the oranges so i dont think they are in danger so im going to let this ride for a while longer at least in hopes of the oranges being able to swim freely in peace one day soon.

 

[dallas612]

i just took these, lights off flash on to show you what i see at night. the first pic in the bottom left you see the black visits the orange in bottom left while the other orange stays on the right and the second pic you see the black female and male together not 5 minutes later. pics are crappy but oh well.