WarEagleNR88
Premium Member
I have a ~2 year old gold striped maroon clown and it's behavior as of late seems rather strange since I moved it over to my 10G. I have had the fish for almost 9 months. First and foremost I should probably add that there is not an anemone in the tank and it shares the tank with hermits, 2 large cleaner shrimp, and cleanup snails (nassarius, astrea, cerith). Here's what I'm observing:
It will swim around the tank like normal but will seem to see itself in the reflection of the tank walls. After this happens, it gets down low near the sand and swims real fast in place kicking sand up everywhere. Sometimes it does this with it's back to the tank wall. It does this for what I think is most of the time, but especially when I'm sitting in front of the tank watching everything. The rest of the time when I stand-off BVR of the clown, it will then swim around and occasionally do it. At night, it sleeps like a normal fish.
This behavior is different that what I've seen before. Before it was doing it just a little bit in some of the caves in my 50G tank where it shared the tank with a similarly aged and sized Blue Velvet Damsel--the damsel was the king of the tank, no doubt. I was thinking maybe it is kicking up sand as a sort of mating ritual, but there is no other clownfish in the tank. Is it just seeing it's reflection and trying to scare off the other "clown" it sees or is it trying to woo the other "clown" to mate?
The fish is perfectly healthy as far as I can tell. Good color, very active, intelligent. The other day I witnessed it pick up a tiny rock from the sand and carry it in its mouth from one side of the tank to the other before letting it drop. For food, it gets a seemingly well diversified diet: Ocean Nutrition Formula 1 small pellets, Hikari Marine-S pellets, Nutrafin max marine flakes, a little Sweetwater Zooplankton, or small portions of thawed Mysis or Brine frozen cubes. I spend about 2-3 minutes a day feeding it in the evening and it will eat and eat until it is full. The rest of the time it is free to scavenge for any pods that are climbing over everything or any algae that it can find that looks tasty.
I'm not really bothered by the behavior, I just can't figure out what's going on. Thanks for any help, I thought I'd ask.
It will swim around the tank like normal but will seem to see itself in the reflection of the tank walls. After this happens, it gets down low near the sand and swims real fast in place kicking sand up everywhere. Sometimes it does this with it's back to the tank wall. It does this for what I think is most of the time, but especially when I'm sitting in front of the tank watching everything. The rest of the time when I stand-off BVR of the clown, it will then swim around and occasionally do it. At night, it sleeps like a normal fish.
This behavior is different that what I've seen before. Before it was doing it just a little bit in some of the caves in my 50G tank where it shared the tank with a similarly aged and sized Blue Velvet Damsel--the damsel was the king of the tank, no doubt. I was thinking maybe it is kicking up sand as a sort of mating ritual, but there is no other clownfish in the tank. Is it just seeing it's reflection and trying to scare off the other "clown" it sees or is it trying to woo the other "clown" to mate?
The fish is perfectly healthy as far as I can tell. Good color, very active, intelligent. The other day I witnessed it pick up a tiny rock from the sand and carry it in its mouth from one side of the tank to the other before letting it drop. For food, it gets a seemingly well diversified diet: Ocean Nutrition Formula 1 small pellets, Hikari Marine-S pellets, Nutrafin max marine flakes, a little Sweetwater Zooplankton, or small portions of thawed Mysis or Brine frozen cubes. I spend about 2-3 minutes a day feeding it in the evening and it will eat and eat until it is full. The rest of the time it is free to scavenge for any pods that are climbing over everything or any algae that it can find that looks tasty.
I'm not really bothered by the behavior, I just can't figure out what's going on. Thanks for any help, I thought I'd ask.
