Need Help with aggressive clownfish chasing my other clownfish !

[funkehouse]

I posted this in the Newbies forum and it was suggested that i also post it here, i didnt even know this section existed until just now ! I am going to just copy and paste what i wrote, any help is GREATLY appreciated !!

Hello,

I am fairly new to reef keeping , my tank has been up just under a year , so i definitely consider myself a novice compared to the guys with decades under their belt !

I have had a Medium sized Occy Clown in my tank for about 6 months , and it has been doing great, i have a Red Tip Bubble Anemone and it loved its new home since the first day i put it in. about 2 months ago i decided to get a new clown, i got a very small Occy, about an inch long and put it in the tank, everything went very smoothly, within a week both clowns were happily enjoying the RBTA. No problems at all up until today, and all off the sudden the bigger clown is VERY aggressively chasing the smaller clown, it is relentless and its hard to watch, i feel SO bad for the little fish, i have been told this is normal clown behavior, if it is how long does this last? a few days? a week? a month? I just dont want the little guy to die from exhaustion or something.

im going to include a video , this is NOT my tank though, but i found this video online and the behavior is almost identical, but mine might be even more aggressive, at least some of the time. Please watch the very short video and tell me if this is normal and approx. how long i can expect this to go on for, and any other advice you can give me, i am very new at this and would love some good advice on this, thank you SO much taking time to read this and to help me ! here is the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=D-yOvb-XRoc

 

[jbm421]

Could be because the larger one is turning into a female so it is laying down the law. Also when a female wants to breed a lot of the time the male is not ready and they have been known to actually kill the male from being too aggressive. It could be neither of these reasons too. I would just monitor it and if the smaller one looks real beat up I would try to separate them until he heals and try it again if it still doesn't work you might need to pick up a little bit of a bigger clown.

 

[funkehouse]

thanks for all the info everyone, it sounds like it is normal pairing that is going on, hopefully the little guy makes it. I have them separated right now, and tomorrow i will keep a very close eye on them and hope for the best, knowing that i can always separate them again if need be....

 

[dc]

Mine became evil once they found the anemone. I was sure one would kill the other, but after a couple weeks they decided they liked each other again. I assumed it was a dominance to become female.