Clowns fighting + strange behavior after the addition of two new fish.

[jeffesaurusrex]

Hi all. I have had a Biocube 29 set up for about a year now. For a long time I only had two Ocellaris clowns in it and they got along well. They have done the "twitch" dance together since I have had them in the tank. One of the two was associating with a big torch coral I had. But I recently added two new fish - a talbot's Damsel and a dot-dash flasher Wrasse. I was actually pretty concerned about the damsel fighting with the clowns but there has been no such thing. Instead my two Clowns began to fight almost constantly. I have seen much worse fish fights so my assumption was that one/both of the Clowns were reaching sexual maturity and that they were sorting out who would be pitching and who would be batting. There were even white marks on the lips of both fish, worse on one than the other, from locking jaws I guess.

Now though I have one of the two, the one that was in worse shape, hiding in caves close to the sand. This isn't a normal behavior for this fish. At first he floated and swam in the caves and I assumed he was going to lay some eggs, but this morning he kind of lays on the sand. His breathing seems normal compared to the other clown, his gills might be a little more "flashy" though. He does come out to eat pellet food and swims fine. His lip marks are going away, he has a white mark or two on his scales from being bitten but his condition has been improving.

Is this fish trying to lay eggs somewhere? Is it just trying to recover? Should I consider removing the aggressive fish and reintroducing it later to reestablish territory? What action if any should I take?

Thanks for reading, any advice is appreciated.

 

[KorL]

Whatever the reason is, the larger clown sees red right now. I would suggest separating the two for now.

 

[jeffesaurusrex]

Now he's trying to hang out in open water and every time she sees him she goes for him. Should I just take her to the LFS and trade her for a juvenile? Or do you think separating the two, maybe in a blacked out breeder box, would do the trick?

One minute they are rubbing up against each other within an inch apart, doing the seizure dance, frolicking in the torch and Duncan corals and the next minute she's chasing him across the tank.

 

[KorL]

That's an option or you can remove the larger one for a bit. Let the smaller one fully recover and try to reintroducing the larger clown

 

[davocean]

It's hard to say for sure w/out actually seeing what is happening, but I would suspect adding the new fish in that size tank has sparked some territorial issues that's making the female just basically lash out.
I especially think that may be the case since you have had them a year together w/out issues.
I would be more inclined to remove the newcomers and see if that calms them down.

 

[jeffesaurusrex]

True, there isn't a lot of room in that tank when it comes to fish that are territorial. I also noticed that while the bully wasn't interested in any "host" corals before, now since she has started trying to run the place she is a lot more interested in them and has been sleeping in the torch.