4 ocellaris clowns in 1 tank - some fighting going on

[ryanpal]

hey guys, i have 4 clowns (2 black and white ones, 1 snowflake, and 1 davinci) in my 30 gal QT tank. they have been getting along for the past month with th exception of the last few days.

i noticed the davinci is getting picked on by the other two black n white clowns. especially the one. the davinci stays up by the corner of the tank avoiding the others and i even noticed a split in his tail from one of the clowns.

i understand this can be part of the process of who becomes the dominate clown etc but i didn't want to risk the one being killed. just now i put in an egg crate to separate them (i had to double it up because they are still pretty small yet) and oddly the one being picked on seems to want to go where the other clowns that were bullying him are.

anyone have any feedback? should i remove the middle thing? when do you determine if the one clown is going to get killed or if it's just part of the normal process?

any info is appreciated!

 

[OllieDog]

A pair of clowns is all your going to fit in a 30 gallon, pick the ones you want, and rehome the other two.

 

[ryanpal]

my DT is 75 gal. this was for qt-ing only.

the stores that we purchased these from had more clowns in smaller tanks.

 

[skinsfan1]

I had two pairs in my 75. pair of true percs I had for a few years. Put in small black occularis he got picked on. Thought I was smart put in another small black occ so he could have a friend. Eventually fighting began. The black occ eventually paired and eventually killed my true percs. I did'nt see them kill them but I found my smallest perc clown dead outside my tank few weeks later found my larger perc clown dead outside my tank. untill I added the other pair of clowns I had the percs for a few years. Lesson learned.

 

[worm5406]

Once they get older they start a pecking order. If you are going to QT for much longer just put some egg crate inside it and separate them out.

I have mine in a 180 with a haddoni and a ritteri.

 

[ryanpal]

interesting feedback...

i'm not sure what to do, keep the crate in there and see if things settle down or only keep the two i want. if possible i'd like to keep them all.

 

[jwoyshnar]

You can keep them, in two seperate tanks. General rule of thumb is eventually the battles will begin. Yes I'm sure there have been instances where they get along but are far and few between.

 

[mcfa2403]

I have seen several tanks keep multiple clowns without natural hosts (a guy here locally likes to do it) but he always starts out with more than survive and he always ends up with a single female with the males in a pecking order.

 

[Salty_Life]

We had the same problem, we had 1 black and white and 3 perc in our 140 gal dt, the two larger of the 3 percs would gang up on the little perc and the black & white would kind of act like switzerland but occasionally help the little one. Something happened because shamu (black & white clown)relentlessly went after one of the larger ones until it died. The remaining 3 were getting along fantastic up til this past month, the two orange started ganging up on shamu, we only let that go on for a little while cause we really love shamu and didn't want to lose him too. We had to end up catching the two percs and put them into our smaller tank. All party's are thriving, healthy and happy so far. Good luck, I hope you are able to keep them all.