Percula Clowns...

sunken ship

Member
I'm thinking of getting a couple of Percula clowns. First off, is it easy to pair them off? Also, are they fairly easy to take care of?
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18G reef w/ 20lbs LR
2 50W half and half lights
Penguin 170 filter
1 Coral Beauty
1 Cleaner Goby
2 Domino Damsels (I will be getting rid of these before i get the clowns)
1 Coral Banded Shrimp
5 Scarlet Hermits
1 Polyp Rock
1 Bubble Coral
 
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ivanfj

Guest
I don't think it's hard to pair them up. I guess you need to check and see if the two clowns are swimming together and hang around together at ur LFS b4 buying them. They are very hardy and almost eat anything you feed them. They are very fun to watch too.
Watch out for some people out there that they may suggest you not to put a coral beauty in a 18g. I personally would like to keep a dwarf angel in my 20. However, if it's kept in a small tank, I would only put it with only one other fish. JMO. BTW, how is it doing??? How long have you been having it??? Just curious :D .
 
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jessicarabit

Guest
First off Percs are soo easy to take care of! They can survive almost anything (temp changes, breakouts, salinity drops, bad water). Of course you still need to make sure they have eveything perfect like any other, but they are forgiving. Now mating a pair depends if you want False Percs or True Percs? True Percs can be bought as a pair (kinda pricey). Now if you want the False kind, then the best advice I was every giving or ever did myself, is to get 2 (maybe 3) False percs around the same size & introduce them in the aquarium at the SAME time. I recommend 3 because it gives the female a chance to chose which one she perfers & the other you can remove. This is better for me, because once you have a a dominant female & only 1 male choice then if she doesn't like him (kills or makes life uncomfortable for him) she has another choice to possible choose from. Of course this all depends on the female. She may decide that she doesn't like either, but once she has been established & if only 1 choice is offered then once that choice is not on the table, then you can't really add another.
This has happen to me were I had only 2 & the male (smaller) was eventually rejected & I couldn't add another perc because my female (larger) has gotten too aggressive.
 
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ivanfj

Guest
Poor male perc clown :D :D
Sounds like it will work really well, I may have to try that when I get my new tank.
 

sunken ship

Member
My coral beauty is doing great. I've only had her for a couple weeks, but so far so good. She comes out to say hi all the time, and i have a good amount of live rock for her to graze on and swim around. Once i can figure out how to change the size of my pics so that they'll fit on the post I will get some on here.
I don't know the difference between true percs and false percs offhand. I heard that you want to get 1 larger than the other when trying to pair them.
 

pmauro

Member
my Percs did great together for 3 months then the female Clairabell started harrassing the heck out of the male Emmit Kelly, I am still waiting for the outcome, it could go either way for Emmit
 

bobo

Member
i would seriously suggest getting a bigger tank. you've only had your coral beauty for a couple of weeks and thats not long enough to say it'll do fine. they are very delicate fishes and cannot tolerate fluctuating water conditions. with your tank at under 20 gal and your plan to stock it with clowns with the all that livestock is really overstocking even if you get small clowns. 20 lbs of lr is not much and its not save to keep coral beautys in a reef tank. your filtering system is not the best to keep so much livestock. not only that coral beautys are semi-aggressive and will be especially so in a small tank with new clowns. they might get picked on and not allowed to acclimate. trust me, i been down taht line a long time ago with a 30 gal with just the coral and a pair of clowns and 50lbs of lr and it was a disaster. the coral beauty will eventually need an established tank more than 50 gal and a lot more lr.
 

sunken ship

Member
First off, my water conditions are very stable. I broke my back back recently and therefor i'm home all of the time with nothing better to do than make sure the conditions in my fishtank stay that way.
What kinds of anemones do percs like? i won't be adding an anemone for awhile, but i'm just curious.
 

stig

Member
Percs are very hardy. A friend of mine had one that survived not one, but two earthquakes. I mean the kind of earthquake where the tank is sent crashing to the floor and its inhabitants with it. Both times he managed to find the clown splattering about amid the broken glass, gravel and water and popped it into a bucket with freshly mixed seawater.
After the 2nd one, I arrived to help him clear up and found that, in the chaos, he had forgotten to put a heater in the bucket. The water was absolutely freezing until I added a heater. But, the little guy came through with no problems.
he eventually died about a year later from natural causes I think. That was one hell of a strong fish :)
 

doodle1800

Active Member
Again... read the book "The Conscientious Marine Aquarist". In there matching percs, is a matter of choosing 2 that are swimming together, one larger than the other. One will be more dominate. Now if I remember right, they change sexes in order to mate? Did I read this correctly?
 
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