Ok, so this was just my experience and I may be wrong but I thought I would share...
As I understand it clownfish use a hierarchical system to determine sex in which you have a sexually active female at the top and an active male second and inactive (maybe?) males at the bottom which means the active male becomes a female next. So I began to think that perhaps an inactive male would be better for pairing with a clown that was already female. My assumption being that these males would be more readily willing to turn male and pair with a new female. This is based on the fact that already paired males already show higher aggression to other clowns and are closer to turning female.
In my case I had an established black onyx female (been in my tank for 5 months and was fat, happy, and generally rather mean) and wanted to add a snowflake clown as her mate. Since snowflakes are tank raised it wasn't hard to find an LFS that had a tank with a number of them in there. Two of the slightly larger clowns had begun to pair and had singled out an inactive that they chased (I did not take this inactive as he was showing too much stress for my taste) but I did choose one of the others (probably 2/3 the length my female). I took him home and for the first hour my female harassed him but he continued to follow her and would do a little dance that I assume was signaling his submission (btw I love that they signal by body language easily one of my favorite clown traits). After an hour the female began to let him follow in peace only showing slight aggression when I fed later.
By that night they were sharing the same corner as a host (irritating since I have two bubble tips and they chose the corner next to my gold torch... hope they don't take a liking to it). A month later both eat well and chase my other two fish away from their corner and only are split occasionally when the female decides to take a short walkabout.
Anyways this was my experience and I thought I would share in hopes that my experience might help someone else. But as this is only anecdotal evidence take it for what its worth.
As I understand it clownfish use a hierarchical system to determine sex in which you have a sexually active female at the top and an active male second and inactive (maybe?) males at the bottom which means the active male becomes a female next. So I began to think that perhaps an inactive male would be better for pairing with a clown that was already female. My assumption being that these males would be more readily willing to turn male and pair with a new female. This is based on the fact that already paired males already show higher aggression to other clowns and are closer to turning female.
In my case I had an established black onyx female (been in my tank for 5 months and was fat, happy, and generally rather mean) and wanted to add a snowflake clown as her mate. Since snowflakes are tank raised it wasn't hard to find an LFS that had a tank with a number of them in there. Two of the slightly larger clowns had begun to pair and had singled out an inactive that they chased (I did not take this inactive as he was showing too much stress for my taste) but I did choose one of the others (probably 2/3 the length my female). I took him home and for the first hour my female harassed him but he continued to follow her and would do a little dance that I assume was signaling his submission (btw I love that they signal by body language easily one of my favorite clown traits). After an hour the female began to let him follow in peace only showing slight aggression when I fed later.
By that night they were sharing the same corner as a host (irritating since I have two bubble tips and they chose the corner next to my gold torch... hope they don't take a liking to it). A month later both eat well and chase my other two fish away from their corner and only are split occasionally when the female decides to take a short walkabout.
Anyways this was my experience and I thought I would share in hopes that my experience might help someone else. But as this is only anecdotal evidence take it for what its worth.
