Perc Clowns going ballistic

[jints]

Yes I am former USAF. My carrier field was Metals Technology. I only served 4 but it was a great experience.
As far as the clowns....the little one is looking beat up. Kinda like the one I saw dead at a ***** with about 5 or 6 doing the same thing. I would separate them or take one back. This doesnt look like a favorable outcome. My clowns did the same thing but is was maybe a handfull of pecks per day and not the holding on to the fin like you are saying. Put my vote in for taking one back. Clowns do very well alone.

 

[scotts]

Yep, looked at your posts and saw you did give the info. If they were OK for two months and just started this then it seems like they are doing the dominance thing. I bought mine really small and they were OK for about a year. Then the started the fighting. This was a while ago so I can't remember exact time frames, but it seems to me that they fought for about two weeks, then split up and swam on different sides of my tank for about two months. Finally they got back together.
You know I would hate to give you bad advice so I checked out this part of the forum. https://forums.saltwaterfish.com/f/21/clownfish-anemones There are some other threads there about clowns fighting that you might want to check out.

 

[airandsea]

Well, just came got back to my room. The small ones fins are pretty beat up now. There are small pieces of skin around the body that are hanging. I really don't want to separate them but think that if I don't the little one will die. I think I am going to take the aggressive one and put it in the QT tank and see how the little one does. I don't think that I will reintroduce them. If the small what recovers I will keep that one and return the larger one. I liked the smaller ones personality better. Oh, and I don't think this is a fight, this is a straight butt shwacking!!!haha. Any other thoughts. Few new pics!!!

 

[scotts]

Good choice. Keep the one you like better and take the other one back. It does look pretty beat up. Can you catch the bully?

 

[airandsea]

Originally Posted by Scotts
http:///forum/post/2667595
Good choice. Keep the one you like better and take the other one back. It does look pretty beat up. Can you catch the bully?
Yep, I caught the bully yesterday and then people were saying to wait it out so I put it back. I am about to get the bully out right now and go from there. If the beat up clown recovers I will be returning the bully and later on maybe get a banggai or two!!! I am just going to wait and see!!

 

[airandsea]

Well, the bully is removed. Nothing like professional fish catching instruments. A fish net and a soup ladle! haha. Now I am just going to wait and see if the small clown is going to recover. I turned the lights off. Wish him luck!!!

 

[osuaquarist]

I-O! If you really want to have a pair I would but a very small clown to make sure that it hasnt started its --- change yet. Even if yours were a male and female sometimes fish just don't get along =(
Do you live on campus?

 

[kellenr]

Yeah everything is pretty much "normal nature" here in the clown world. You obviously dont want 1 clown beating the heck out of the other one though. Clownfish are very territorial and demand a hierarchy, and everyone in the tank knows where they stand in the hierarchy. Sometimes this fighting will go on if theres an 'available female' in the tank. Or sometimes if theres 2 males that cant agree on whos 'territory' a certain space is. And then theres just your case where it looks as if one is just overly aggressive and picking on the small guy. It's probably best you got him out. From the looks of the video & photos it wasn't your usual 'just kind of bug him here and there', looked like he wouldn't lay off of him and the nips were getting much worse by the day. You can always try putting a new clown in there in the future, they're usually not that rough with each other, you just got a bad one.
It's usually the 'similar sized' fish that fight for dominance. Most of the time if your gonna only get 2 clowns you get 1 big one and 1 small one because this 'should' eliminate any type of fighting, size alone will solve anys disagreements.
Well your fish should do fine, doesn't look like its seriously injured. Fins grow back well, they just sometimes grow slow but should go back to normal within a month or two. The added stress on the small fish may influence his health so just be sure its eating and watch its body for any signs of sickness. Good luck!

 

[airandsea]

The small seems to be recovering very well. I returned the large one back to the lfs. They gave me store credit. I am going to wait for them to get some banggais in.