I have two juvenile clownfish, one normal orange ocellaris, one wyoming white. The pecking order has always been the wyoming white being the alpha of the tank, and the orange being subdominant/male, and the guppies just did their own thing. Lately the orange ocellaris has taken to biting the tails off the female guppies. Sometimes it is just one bite, sometimes it is the entire tail, and he drags the flailing guppy to the filter intake. He did over 5 in one day, and it all started with this strange 'herding' behavior, where he would herd all of the guppies into one school in the corner, and then dive through the center of them, and sometimes biting tails. The clownfish are still pretty small, I got them as juveniles in November, but I'm closer to the guppies, who actively keep my zoanthids algae-free, and breed easier.
Tank size is 40 breeder, water params stable, constant 77.9F, 8hrs on, 16hrs dark, skimmate hasn't changed, no other tank mates, some coral frags, calcium/strontium/magnesium all stable, last major event was a small algae bloom a few months back. I'm genuinely at a loss for the cause of the sudden aggression other than the possibility of the clowns getting ready to breed. The bigger of the two, the wyoming white, shows no aggression and lets the guppies eat first, even though the orange's aggression isn't during feeding time. The wyoming white only shows aggression toward the orange, but not in a violent way, more like a fin nipping, which could be seen as mating behavior.
I could just be over-reacting, but there's a few guppies in there right now floating around on stumps and it has me feeling a little bad for them, because I don't want to have to find a home for the clowns or set up a new tank.
Tank size is 40 breeder, water params stable, constant 77.9F, 8hrs on, 16hrs dark, skimmate hasn't changed, no other tank mates, some coral frags, calcium/strontium/magnesium all stable, last major event was a small algae bloom a few months back. I'm genuinely at a loss for the cause of the sudden aggression other than the possibility of the clowns getting ready to breed. The bigger of the two, the wyoming white, shows no aggression and lets the guppies eat first, even though the orange's aggression isn't during feeding time. The wyoming white only shows aggression toward the orange, but not in a violent way, more like a fin nipping, which could be seen as mating behavior.
I could just be over-reacting, but there's a few guppies in there right now floating around on stumps and it has me feeling a little bad for them, because I don't want to have to find a home for the clowns or set up a new tank.
What's your acclimation procedure and parameters like? Water here in memphis is very very soft and low nutrient, so I keep my freshwater guppy tank full of aragonite to buffer the pH and hardness before they move into saltwater, which is full hardness with a high pH. I think raising the fry in this environment somewhat eases the transition to salt; also I heard guppies love hard water, so that may be why they don't show signs of stress.
