Yellow Ocellaris?

[Titus77]

At the Petco near my house, they always seem to have yellow clownfish that look just like a normal orange ocellaris, but instead of the orange, they are yellow. Is that a healthy color? They are cheap. I was just thinking about trying to breed those first, to get the hang of it. They always have those yellow clowns there, and sometimes, I see a Picasso Clown there:eek2: . Until now did I not think anything of them. I did not know that they were sought over. I thought that it was defected! If there is one (or more) there, I will DEFINITLY get it. LOL. So are the yellow clows in bad shape? I will bring my camera there to take pictures of them to see what you guys think. Thanks.

 

[NCSUsalt]

The yellow is probably just because your local PETCO keeps their pH too low and it can affect their colors (they are stressed). Other than that they will be normal oscellaris ordered from ORA. PETCO can't get picassos, we are very limited in what we can order from ORA you may just be seeing an oscellaris with good banding, but i gurantee you they are not from picasso stock. I run the SW at one of the top 50 PETCOs in SW sales, so i'm very aware of what we can and can't order. We usually also seem to get ORA seconds, lots of misbars, etc.

 

[Titus77]

Since you are familiar with Petco's fish, can you please tell me how each fish is caught? Not just clownfish, but every saltwater fish Petco gets.

 

[Slakker]

Yellow is not necessarily a healthy coloration, can indicate stress and poor nutrition.

 

[Titus77]

All of the clowns there are always yellow. Sometimes there will be an orange one, but that is rare!

 

[NCSUsalt]

^ as said, they are all stressed. your local PETCO probably lets their water quality slip quite a bit and probably feed them the crap we get in for store use, which usually gets overfed, breaks down and spikes the nitrate levels. I'm willing to bet if you take one of those clowns home and test that water the nitrates will be through the roof. plus, the marineland systems kinda suck, i gurantee their UV bulbs haven't been replaced. the integrated skimmer is worthless. the heaters seem to fail after about a year.

As for how the fish are caught, go ask your LFS, lots of their stock comes from the same vendors.

also, to be a stickler. It's PETCO, not Petco or PetCo

 

[kimsie]

I could be wrong... but I was under the impression that PETCO only gets their fish through ORA - right? If so then the fish wouldn't be caught at all - but were captive breed?

 

[MJI]

I see this a lot in the stock over here that comes TB, they are very washed out a lot of the time, but they do with a good diet and environment colour up well.

Oh, and just for added info, some WC occels from the coral sea area I had would be described as yellow, and they were super healthy...

 

[NCSUsalt]

^^ all clowns come through ORA. we can also get clams, seahorses, several dottybacks, zoanthids, nepthea trees, bangai cardinals, gracillaria, neon gobies, and a few other nick nacks through ORA. Other fish come from many of the same vendors your LFS may order from.

 

[Titus77]

Usually, I get my fish from Jeff's Exotic Fish, who gets deliveries twice a week from around Japan, Hawaii, and the Indian Ocean. This was the first time that I ever bought a fish from Petco.