Check out the difference in color between my Wild Caught and Tank Raised Perculas

[pammy]

Hey All

I had bought a pair of wild caught Percula's and the larger one harrassed the smaller one, and the smaller one died within a few hours of bringing it home. Replaced it with another smaller clown, and that one was eaten by my small Duncan coral about a week or two later. I thought I'd try one last time to pair of my clown. My LFS got in an order of Tank Raised Perculas, and WOW...what a difference in color. The Tank Raised looks red. At first, I didn't think I'd like that they didn't match, and wasn't sure if they'd get along (LFS said they would, so I took a chance), but I LOVE the contrast in color, and they are getting along great. I couldn't get a great pic because they were swimming too fast, but you can at least see the color contrast in this picture. Looks like I have 4 clowns in this pic.

 

[criccio]

They may be TR percs...false percs though, aka A. ocellaris. Do you have better pics of them?

 

[OrionN]

You got an A. ocellaris (TR) and a A. percula.

 

[pammy]

The orange one, is definitely a True Perc. Not sure about the red one. The LFS said it was a true Perc, but it doesn't have any black stripes so I thought maybe they were mistaken, but they said that was because they are babies....only a month old. I'll try to get a better shot. They've just been really active, so hard to get a pic that's not blurry. I thought Ocellaris were less vibrant than the True Percs though? Has anyone seen a Ocellaris or true perc that looks red like this one ?
Pam

 

[pammy]

Here's a better shot of them.

 

[phender]

The new fish looks like it is probably an ocellaris to me as well.

The color of TR clowns depends a lot on what they are fed. Yours looks like it got a lot of Cyclop-eeze or something similar as it was growing. At that size, it is a lot older than 1 month. I takes 7-14 days or so just to get through metamorphosis.

 

[marc price]

phil, are you implying it's red color will dull down if pammy doesn't continue to feed it a cyclop-eeze type of food? i've never kept true or false percs but have seen large ora shipments of false percs arrive at petco's containing a few very orange red specimens along with many duller perc's .

 

[phender]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10813333#post10813333 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by marc price
phil, are you implying it's red color will dull down if pammy doesn't continue to feed it a cyclop-eeze type of food? i've never kept true or false percs but have seen large ora shipments of false percs arrive at petco's containing a few very orange red specimens along with many duller perc's .

That I don't know. I know that in the early 90's TR ocellaris were not popular because their colors were so dull. When I started feeding Vibra-Gro with color inhancers similar to those found in cyclop-eeze, no one could believe the babies I was selling were TR. When the babies were weaned onto more normal clownfish food, they kept their color.

I have always wondered why ORA clowns are often quite dull when they were the ones that developed Vibra-Gro (now ORA-Glow) in the first place.

 

[Mavrk]

It is very difficult to distinguish between a captive breed A. Percula and an A. Ocellaris. Without counting dorsal fin spines, most of it is in the eyes. A. percula have more bulging eyes and cheekbones when viewed head on. Also, look for a bright orange iris rather than greyish-orange. Neither of these are foolproof ways to tell (especially in captive breed species that may have some variations).

I have never seen either species that red, so that doesn't really mean much. Like what was said above, it is probably the food.

 

[chrisqueenz]

Wow, that is a big difference in color.

 

[CruzinKim]

The clown breeder may have fed them Cyclopeeze to color them up before the sales to LFS. If you feed them frozen Cyclopeeze, the clowns should color up and retrain their brighter colors.

 

[GSMguy]

looks llike the brighter orange is an ocellaris and the lighter one with more black is a percula to me. they are different colors because they are not the same kind of fish...