attack fish!!

G

gpx1200

New member
i have a gold stripe maroon clown that relentlessly attacks my arm every time i go into the tank a few times to the point of drawing blod by hiting the same spot on my arm over and over. it doesn't matter if i'm right next to his anenome or on the other side of the tank he's just as vishous. he grabs on and shakes like a shark, i'm prety shure he's trying to take a bite out of me and its geting prety anoying.
anyone ever seen a clown like this? i have a lawnmower bleny,yello watchmen goby and a long nose hawk fish in with him and he doesn't mess with them unless they get to close to the anenome but he's definetly the king of the tank. aparently he just hates or wants to eat me. i feed a good mix of food brine/mysis,cyclopeez,squid, veggies,bloodworms, plus he eats some feather and grape calurpa thats grows in my tank and sump so i don't think it's a food ishew. any ideas on how to tame this angry fish? only thing i could think of is get him a mate mabie that will calm him down
thanks
chris
 
A mate will not calm her down. The only thing that will happen is if she lets the new fish survive, you'll have two fish attacking your arm instead of one.

GSM clowns get mean, lots of hobbyists have experienced what you are :)
 
Recty said:
A mate will not calm her down. The only thing that will happen is if she lets the new fish survive, you'll have two fish attacking your arm instead of one.

GSM clowns get mean, lots of hobbyists have experienced what you are :)
Click to expand...

A pair is worse. They will then attack other fish as well. For this species it is "tale as old as time, true as it can be"
 
haha...My false percula does the same thing. She's very nice to the rest of the fish in my tank (sometimes she will chase them if they get very close to her coral), but everytime I so much as put my hand in the tank she is trying to attack me like crazy. Actually, jumped out of the water one time to bite my hand.
 
I took my GSM clown back to the LFS over this past weekend. He turned nasty after 4 months. I traded him for an Oci.

I think that is the only way to stop hostility, unfortunately. :uhoh2:
 
Clowns are just about as territorial as the other aggressive damsels. Maybe more, especially if an Anemone or a surrogate host, is present!
Steve is right, too. a pair will be the same problem, SQUARED! LOL

Matthew
 
"He" is most likely a she. Try training her to eat out of your hand. I've had the same problem with several different species of anemonefish. Several years ago, I started training them to eat out of my hand, and the attacks stopped. Right now I have 7 clowns, including an old and huge pair of maroons, and none of them bite. Well, the female maroon will gently nip at me when I first put my hand in the tank, thinking I have food, but once she figures out that I don't, she lets me do what ever I want. You can see in this video that she nips me when I first put my hand in the tank, but then let me do as I wish.
<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/9KMOcpoVrDc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
 
I had a pair of Tomato clowns that attacked me like that. Even my occellarius clown will attack me although it is too small to take a chunk out of me.
 
my clown bites me every single time i put my arm in thank. lucky for me she is small so it doesn't hurt. only annoying lol
 
iv'e been told that it's a male becouse of it's small size being about 3yrs old and only around 3inches, i was told the males stay small compared to the females
 
this pic shows his size well the tanks a 92 corner bow
he/she's right below the center of the pic
 

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gpx1200 said:
iv'e been told that it's a male becouse of it's small size being about 3yrs old and only around 3inches, i was told the males stay small compared to the females
Click to expand...

The males do typically remain smaller than the females, but they won't remain male unless they live with a female. If your fish has lived alone for three years, you can be pretty sure it's a female. They can only grow so fast. Yours has averaged an inch per year. That's not bad at all. You're simply not going to have a 5+ inch maroon in three years. It's the goal of all clowns to mature into females. The only way to stop this process, and keep the clown male, is to have a dominant female in the tank.
 
Recty said:
You know it's truth when someone quotes Beauty and the Beast.
Click to expand...

It was a double entendre. Back when I was taking pictures of them under water they would try and blind me. Fortunately I was wearing a dive mask. But they are beautiful and they are definitely a beast. But well done recognizing the source.
 
Nice tank GPX!

Whoa- joined in 2005 and have 11 posts

You should have some kind of elevated status for using the search function and creating a great tank.
 
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