Call me crazy but I have a very sad clown on my hands. I am fairly new to saltwater and have a 20 gallon. Only fish are my clown and I had a domino damsel who passed away last night (seemed 100% perfect before bed). They were best best friends! They swam together and never fought. Now the clown is just not swimming the tank like he did with the domino. His color is good and I don't believe there is anything wrong. I want to get another friend for him. Can you guys give me some suggestions for a peaceful addition? I don't want something that will cause a threat obviously. I only have hermits and a snail other than the clown. Thank you!!
Help finding the best addition...
- Thread starter dawnpar
- Start date
The Domino Damsel and the Clown may have been best friends now but I'm afraid it was going to be a short lived friendship. Domino's get big, ugly and mean as they mature.
You could start by trying another clown (it need to be the same species as your current clown) that is smaller than the clown you have in the tank now. There is never a guarantee that any one particular clown will accept another, but if it is smaller you have a good chance that they will bond. With a mated pair you are going to be very limited to additional fish in your tank going forward as a pair of clowns will consider the entire tank theirs and theirs alone. You could possibly get by with a firefish or a flasher wrasse, but it would be a gamble.
You could start by trying another clown (it need to be the same species as your current clown) that is smaller than the clown you have in the tank now. There is never a guarantee that any one particular clown will accept another, but if it is smaller you have a good chance that they will bond. With a mated pair you are going to be very limited to additional fish in your tank going forward as a pair of clowns will consider the entire tank theirs and theirs alone. You could possibly get by with a firefish or a flasher wrasse, but it would be a gamble.
Thank you! I appreciate your feedback! I would really like to have more than 2 fish. Was a clown fish just not a good start? I get conflicting info between the forums here and the different associates at my LFS but I believe I can have up to 5 fish in a 20 gal depending on what we go with. What do you think about that? I love having a salt tank but we do get attached to our fish here so I am sad the Damsel didn't work out.
sde1500
Active member
5 may be too many. Hard to pin down an exact number. You could probably get a second clown. Just get a smaller one for a better chance of not ending up with two females in the tank. Is also suggest maybe a fire fish as a peaceful tank mate. And maybe a goby. I had a high fin stripped goby and Randall's pistol shrimp combo and it was cool to watch them together.
Nearly all fish are potential jumpers, but yes firefish are very prone to jump. I would recommend that you look into getting a birds netting cover for your tank or you should expect that you will have regular fish losses if you leave the tank uncovered. I've had clowns, angels, golbies... jump out of my tank in the past when I did not have a cover, in the end I decided that as much as I liked the rimless look without a cover I was being irresponsible to the fish in my care.
I didn't realize that about the clowns. Learning a lot from you 
Its mostly covered except a portion of the back. Honestly I don't like it and have been looking for a new lid. I didn't realize when I bought the rimless tank from craigslist that a lid would be such a problem to find.
Its mostly covered except a portion of the back. Honestly I don't like it and have been looking for a new lid. I didn't realize when I bought the rimless tank from craigslist that a lid would be such a problem to find.
My clown jumped into the overflow and met with a grisly fate down the overflow tube. So yes they jump.
Awe! That is very sad!
isomorphic85
New member
you may want to also test your water .... make sure your not getting an ammonia spike if you lost one fish and now the other guy is looking sluggish... how long has the tank been up and running for?
so far the numbers are good but I will continue to check them out! I started a 5 gallon 7 months ago and immediately learned that was going to be more work and little life I could add to it. So I upgraded right away to the 20. I know it's still small and challenging (although it hasn't given me much trouble) but I don't really have the space for much more. My house has a TON of windows and I just had very little options for placement.
