What kinds of growout clowns can you keep together?
- Thread starter MimicTang
- Start date
David M
New member
I sort by size as much as possible. I purposely do NOT sort the species as mixing them up (IME) seems to greatly lessen the aggression of fish like tomato's and maroons. In fact I am convinced of this. I have a couple hundred gsm's approaching 3/4" and not one torn fin, they are mixed with o's and tomato's. I have raised them alone before and at this size they would mostly be pretty much shredded up.
Dman
New member
Mimic,
Remember this is a facility for the terminally insane, so I don't actually have the internet. All communication by me is done by and through the state of the art solid tinfoil hat. (Also good for keeping the voices away) A must have after aliens melt your lips together. Tee hee hee. The real bonus is the pottery classes.
As for the real question, the GSM's take more than a year on my part to colour up, the bands are alot wider on the GSM's, but it's a chance right now I'm not willing to take.
As for the sort q? See my thread called SORTING FISH.
Remember this is a facility for the terminally insane, so I don't actually have the internet. All communication by me is done by and through the state of the art solid tinfoil hat. (Also good for keeping the voices away) A must have after aliens melt your lips together. Tee hee hee. The real bonus is the pottery classes.
As for the real question, the GSM's take more than a year on my part to colour up, the bands are alot wider on the GSM's, but it's a chance right now I'm not willing to take.
As for the sort q? See my thread called SORTING FISH.
David M
New member
Right, because that thread is so straight forward, stays on track so well and is so concise :lol:
Sorting by size is not about aggression, not about little guys getting picked on. It's about feeding, if you allow too much disparity in size the larger and more aggressive fish will out compete the smaller more timid ones at feeding time. Once this starts it snowballs, the big get bigger and the little ones starve.
Dman
New member
Exactly. like most of the threads in this forum.
When it comes to sorting fish, I think that there are several factors in play; food and subsequent starving for one, aggression for another and lastly an intangible (at this point) growth/runt syndrome.
I strongly believe this has to do with the very nature of the species itself. In the wild they form small group hierarchies whereas if you're not top dog (female) or sniffin’ top dog's butt (male) you're a stunted non-sexual juvenile. For a runt to eat enough to get it's fill and not progress in terms of size would not be that far out of line with what happens in the wild.
Hence sorting out the runts and keeping them together fosters the competitiveness necessary to promote the "race to be top dog"
I have absolutely no data to back up that opinion in any way, shape or form this is all from personal observation.
David M
New member
Too big IMO, would require about 5000 fish per tank to keep the density up. ( taking ten/ gallon as sort of the standard benchmark). Anything less and there will probably be a lot of wasted food and a lot of beat up clownfish. Also since you want them all in a fairly narrow size range you'd be talking about production on the scale of ~2500-5000 per month which I think is a bit optomistic 
10-15-20 gallon tanks are probably more realistic as growout tanks. My cubes are 8 and 12 gallons and I can put 700 month old clowns in a small one no problem. Of course they are part of a 350 gallon system.
FWIW I wouldn't do it again and will probably change it. I am beginning to see the potential problems with this system and if I had known better would have built several smaller systems to achieve the same volume. Maybe 5-20's and a sump for 100-125 gallons each.
10-15-20 gallon tanks are probably more realistic as growout tanks. My cubes are 8 and 12 gallons and I can put 700 month old clowns in a small one no problem. Of course they are part of a 350 gallon system. FWIW I wouldn't do it again and will probably change it. I am beginning to see the potential problems with this system and if I had known better would have built several smaller systems to achieve the same volume. Maybe 5-20's and a sump for 100-125 gallons each.
Guess it just shows what I think of the 10 per gallon estimate, I tend to lean towards 100 :lol:
David M
New member
I'm getting the impression you already have a 55 and you want to use it. If so fine but I wouldn't go out of my way to buy one specifically for clown growout. Smaller tanks are more versitle and practicle. You can always make a movable divider for the 55 and adjust it for greater space as the fish grow.
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