Tank Journal Archive

[RCanik]

It's been a while.

Here's a quick recap. Candy hog committed death by carpet (found the smallest gap in the mesh lid!) so Eddie picked up a couple of Black Onyx clowns. The one kicked the shit out of the other. More so than expected and killed it. So Dave is replacing it when the next shipment arrives in a few days.

The remaining clown started to host the cabbage coral....stupid fish. So I picked up a nice little Green BTA that for the time being seems to be quite happy wedged in a crevice right smack middle in the tank, good viewing! Now if only the clown would pay attention to it haha.

The old scape was pretty forced I felt. Looked cool but didn't leave much room for coral placement. I literally just up ended the structure and actually like the way it ended up. More room on the sandbed, still some caves and swim throughs for the Assessor and heaps more rock surface for coral placement.

A few weeks ago a piece of chalice I was housing temporarily fell onto one of my small WA Scolly's. Thankfully the thing has bounced back and is actively feeding! Both inflate to about 50cent piece size.

I'm now on the hunt for some more maxi mini's to create a little bit of a nem garden.

Photos!:

This acro makes me happy. Need more acros.

 

[Wrangy]

Looks fantastic! :) You've done an awesome job so far and you can never have enough acro's either :D

 

[Sam Parker]

Saw these black onyx clowns, very nice :)

 

[chimaera]

Great tank, nice work!

 

[leodb89]

I tried posting this earlier but couldn't had bad reception..i got a feeling you might have the issue with the clowns again if you don't get them already paired or close to it.

I had the same experience with my gf's tank where the first pair were occys and they were sold as a pair but were more so sold from a tank with 10-20 clowns (captive bred) so this meant yes they were good to be put together but no they had not sorted out their dominance.

I didn't think anything of it at the time and then took the clown to my place and got her a pair of skunk clowns, again the same thing happened, although this time they were sold as a pair, but no distinct size difference.

It led me to doing what I should've done before adding them, asking more questions...(I'm not saying this toward you I'm just explaining my experience)...i read a few posts and a lot suggested that in a nano its not easy for the dominance to get sorted too often especially in a minimalistic scaped tank (hers was like this) and the reason being is that in a larger tank or a tank with more hiding spots they will bash each other, then have a time out until she finds him again and tries to slaughter him to show how much she loves him lol.

so in future i would probably go with a distinct size difference between the 2 to prevent this happening to me again. although that being said, this is only my experience and that of many others, but there is always 2 ends to a scale and there are plenty who do not have this issue at all, but in the hobby where 'something that can happen, might/will happen' I figured I need to plan more before I buy lol...at least for a few weeks while its fresh and then ill forget and impulse.

 

[Sam Parker]

I can confirm what Leo is saying with my extensive one-time experience.... ;)

I was given a large female for free and she lived angrily in my tank a for a couple of months (was quite aggressive!) before I wanted to pair her up. I bought the smallest clown I could find and everyone (on another forum...) told me she would kill the new clown. Popped him in the tank and bam, they were mates. She eventually even lost her aggression towards me!

Not sure if it was just luck - but two very different sizes of clowns worked well for me.

 

[leodb89]

I can confirm what Leo is saying with my extensive one-time experience.... ;)

I was given a large female for free and she lived angrily in my tank a for a couple of months (was quite aggressive!) before I wanted to pair her up. I bought the smallest clown I could find and everyone (on another forum...) told me she would kill the new clown. Popped him in the tank and bam, they were mates. She eventually even lost her aggression towards me!

Not sure if it was just luck - but two very different sizes of clowns worked well for me.

@thepubenator has similar experience with his rare collection with larger and smaller to get them paired

 

[RCanik]

Yep this is my guess too. I've always known to get some different sized ones etc etc. The two I had were so close in size I could hardly tell. So I'll be grabbing the smallest one I can find and placing it in a breeding net for introductions sake. Fingers crossed