adopted a clown

[hijinks]

To start off these are both False Percs.

I had a 1.75 inch clown in my tank for around 3 months happily.. I took a clown off a guys hand from a local club that was getting bullied by his mated pair.

So my finance thinks our clown is attacking the new one but I think it might be the dominance issue. Its strange.. the established clown is chasing the new one away only sometimes.. other times they swim next to each other when the new one gets close.. The other odd part is the established clown does the matting twitch..

After he/she swims quickly he/she will twitch.. Now I've read that the twitch is only something males do to submit and say they are ready to mate.. but he is showing dominance towards the other one at the same time.

Now sure if the established clown is a female already or not. Should I let it play out or find a new home for the new clown? My finance is nervous the new clown will get beat up since she has seen it happen at LFS when they have 30 clowns in a 30g tank to sell.

 

[Arati]

This hapend for me alot when I pair fish. especially tank bred fish. It seems the little males dont know how to submit properly and the female is kinda showing them. He will get it soon.

I would let it play out as long as its not getting to serious.

 

[hijinks]

Ok I'll try to convince her to let the clown stay for a bit to see if it settles down.

 

[Lmecher]

Have you read the sticky at the top of this forum?
Explains it all.

http://archive.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=215098

From your description, sounds normal. They need to work it out amongst themselves. As long as neither are getting injured, they're fine, nessessary bickering which could continue for an a while on and off.
good luck : )

 

[hijinks]

I read that.. just wasn't sure why the aggressive one was doing the twitching.

 

[Mook Man]

Mine have been doing that as well for a while now; I have a pair of true percs the one doing the twitching is the larger, wild caught one that I assume will be female because she's the only on that ever charges at the other (tank bred). Like Arati said, I'm now inclined to think that she's sort of *showing* him how to do it properly, especially when I consider the past antics that have been occurring.

Initially, when she began to charge at him, stopping right before she reached his anal fin, he wouldn't really twitch at all - a couple weeks later when it happened he'd do this really rapid twitching, like he was trying to figure it out but only occasionally; about half the time he wouldn't really do anything. A couple more weeks progressed and he'd alternate between not doing anything, fast twitching, and the normal way like she was showing him. Now, finally, it seems as if he's beginning to catch on that if he does it just the right way she won't come at him so frequently; just yesterday I saw him doing it correctly almost all the time. Neither one shows any fight marks though and they don't end fights mouth-to-mouth so I guess it can continue as long as it takes. I can only hope that they figure it out soon because it's been a long time.