Fifteen juvenile ocellaris experiment

[125mph]

So I got them a little present today...

The funny thing is they haven't shown the slightest interest at all in my bubble tips or sebea but as soon as I pulled my arm out of the tank after sitting this new guy down they formed a school and 1 at a time started doing drive by's to investigate the new nem. About an hour later I caught one already playing in it.

The nem's foot is straddling 2 ridges in the rock and has me slightly worried as there's a gaping cave under most of it's foot atm but hopefully it'll settle down overnight.

What nem is that? I can't tell.. ritteri?

 

[bradam]

Ritteri yeah, the funny thing is I have been looking for a healthy one for a while now. I finally found and ordered one from diversden the other day. Then I happened to stop in the LFS (that NEVER has Mags) to pickup some more krill and there it was happily munching on a krill they had just fed it as I walked in. Sales guy said it came in accidently in a shipment. They had it under a couple T5's and it had climbed up to the top of thier holding tank trying to find some meaningful light. Bit of an impulse buy but it looked healthly and had eagerly gobbled down the krill so I snatched it up =)

I was trying to get a Flip video of it but as soon as the silly clowns see me they instantly swarm the front glass chanting FOOOOD!

 

[hypnoj]

following

 

[bradam]

Came home from work and my AC had quit :mad2::mad2::mad2:

House was 86 degrees and the tank hit 82, the poor chiller is still going full bore. I generally keep the tank at a solid 79 and everything looked fine except my new Mag looks kinda droopy

Crossing my fingers and hoping the temp jump didn't overstress the poor guy.

 

[BonsaiNut]

Temp probably won't stress them. I've been swimming with H. magnifica in water that was 86 degrees. The important thing is high dissolved oxygen levels, good water movement, and strong lighting.

 

[jbax]

I was trying to get a Flip video of it but as soon as the silly clowns see me they instantly swarm the front glass chanting FOOOOD!

get a auto feeder and they should slowly stop thinking... human=food

also, nice to see fisheye services hooked you up with what you wanted.

 

[bradam]

So everything is going good, new Mag is eating great, seems happy, clowns love playing in it.. hasn't moved since day 2.. then today I get up and...

^(%(&*@!#

Poor clownfish were going nuts..

You'd have thought they'd have had more sense and kept the Mag from trying to kill itself..

I managed to get the grill off the pump and moved that and the mag up to the rock pile.. I dunno what to do with it now, it dosen't "seem" to be ripped or torn at all but it's foot is stuck through the grill pretty bad so its hard to see the real damage

 

[hypnoj]

did the powerhead fall down or was it already in the position and the anemone moved to it?

 

[bradam]

did the powerhead fall down or was it already in the position and the anemone moved to it?

The Mag moved waaaay down the rockpile, off the rockpile about 6 inches, and somehow ended up on that powerhead. Thankfully its just a little one I stuck back in the corner because I kept getting a deadspot in the flow back there.

 

[bradam]

It let go of the powerhead grill finally. It looks quite a bit smaller in general. The mouth is shut but kinda sticking way up and looks really weird. Like it's pukering up for a kiss or something.

It did take some krill but I had to stand gaurd from a steady onslaught of clownfish bent on stealing it.

One thing I hadn't considered when putting 15 clowns in there is how difficult it is to feed the nem's now. 15 little thieves instead of 2 lol Being baby size too some of them can completely hide down in the tenticles where you cant even see them till they suddenly pop out with some krill chunks in thier mouths.

 

[dalilgriffith]

Id look at seperating it for a while with steady flow. Egg crate?

 

[mobert]

Best of luck with your experiment.
If you have a good skimmer, you feed your anemone small particles of food, then clowns won't be able to steal it.
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Mine were all from the same clutch (some offsprings added years later). Any aggression were between clowns that were of similar size in the hierarchy and once they had it worked out, they really do seem to all like each other, preferring to mostly staying together at night. Of course, my clowns are Percs rather than Occelaris and yours may behave differently.

 

[Angel*Fish]

Very intersting. I think it helps the nem to make the particles small when it's needing some tlc. On a side note, I know of someone who has a 400 g tank and he as 3 huge nems with a mature maroon pair, ocellaris pair and a mature female tomato. It's a big tank, but with the size of these fish they are kind of close together. So I assume it the anemones that keep the peace.

 

[bradam]

I haven't posted an update in a while lol

My bad advice to anyone pondering more then 1 pair of clowns is.. don't.

Oddly enough out of the 15 I now have 5 remaining. One kamakized out of the tank while I was feeding them, hit the floor and my cat tried to eat it before I even had time to say Oh Sh..

Five of the remaining 14 that are the more darkish colored formed a small gang consisting of 2 pairs and a juvi. The five of them one day suddenly turned rasict and systemically killed all of the light colored ones in 1-2 days, save one poor fellow who managed to somehow dive into the return drain and survive in the sump a week or two till I finally saw him.

Much to the dispare of my anemone crabs one pair settled down in my Crispa. One of the crabs disapeared and the other decided it was safer to live here

The other pair mostly hung out in the green bubble tips until I added a new Crispa/Malu, and they for some reason like to hang out by it now. I ordered that nem because it was listed as sky blue and looked good in the photos but sadly it arrived bleached out and has yet to attach to anything =(

 

[bues0022]

It's really big of you to come on here stating what you originally thought was a great idea was actually not. Hopefully more who want to try to do this will run across your thread and become more informed on the real dangers.

 

[Michael B]

Great thread and many thanks for all the info

 

[hypnoj]

can you tell us from start to finish how long it took before your fish turned like this? I think it's important for members to understand that all things in your tank can look perfect and happy for a given amount of time... And then all hell can break loose.

 

[bradam]

They all got along fine till about a month ago. Nothing changed in the tank that I'm aware of to make them switch from friends to foes. I think they were all toghter about 10 months-ish.

Few years back I had a pair of maroons and a pair of ocellaris in the same tank, on opposite ends, who got along fine for a couple years then just one day went after each other.

Have to hire a fish Psychologist I guess :lmao:

 

[1Sik1500]

Thank you for updating.

 

[tvrsir]

nice!