crowded clowns

[littleearth]

I wonder if anyone can give me some good advice? I have a 120gal reef tank; regarding a pair of clowns, I am not sure if they are mated pairs, but one became female so I introduced an anemone which took them a long time to move into, anyway the anemone split and they were living apart female in one anemone and male in the other. I had a friend break down her tank recently and she gave me her live stock, including two baby clowns. So, then I was told I cannot have four clowns in one tank and the female will kill them. Well, it has been a few months now and all is well the female does not seem to care about having "her" male all to herself. Long story short, all four of the clowns are living in two large anemones together, all Ocellaris Clownfish by the way! Assuming territory issues were inevitable I bought another small anemone for the new males, but the anemone moved away and no one seems to be interested. Am I in for a disaster? Will any of the new males become female and can they all cohabitate?

 

[planedoc]

I've had 4 in my 240 for over a year. One appears to have turned female. I've seen no fighting at all. I don't have anemones but two share a toad stool, one has its own toadstool and one hangs out in the corner. In my 75 gallon the breeding pair is very aggressive with everyone who dares to invade their space, including me. Your tank is good sized so you might be ok

 

[bues0022]

A few months, and even a year is far too short to determine long-term sucecss of more than 1 pair of clowns in a tank. Success is more likely in a larger tank as planedoc has, but even then not a sure thing. In all likelihood, as your clowns reach sexual maturity, you will end up with a single pair of clownfish. You will find cases on the web where people will say "my four live fine together", but past success does not correlate to future predictions with animals. It is like having a pet tiger that never bites - does this mean that all pet tigers will never bite? Or, is the owner of said tiger just very lucky to have an individual that is more docile than most? Their nature is to have one pair, and kill other threatening. Having more than 1 pair in a tank at a time is playing with fire.