please help with my clownfish

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mattt6511

Aquarium Advice Activist
Joined
Oct 30, 2005
Messages
114
Location
Lillington, nc
I bought 2 clown fish about 2 weeks ago i noticed the one clow had bad tears in his fin and his coloring wasnt as orange, they got along great were always next to one another swimming alongside, i didnt see them nip at each other once. 2 days later my one poor little clown died :-( now the clown thats left for the past week and a half hasnt been really swimming around he just stays in one area of the tank and does really move much just hovers there.... hes the only fish in the tank, my water quality is perfect, whast wrong wtih him????
 
maybe he's lonely..... It may sound odd, but a similar thing happened to my clowns, and I got a new one to replace one that died, and the lonely one started acting bubbly and goofy again.
 
lol thats what i was thinking i was going to say he looks lonely but i didnt want everyone making fun of me.... now this is my question, i just have him in the tank now would it be oky if i added 2 small new clowns with him, or would they fight, i would get the same type of percuala clown i just dont know if 3 of them would get along ok in my 29 gallon tank, thats all i would do for livestock.
 
as a 29g tank, u might be pushing it, i would suggest just get 1 percula and see how it goes they usually get along with no problem but when they fight, clown fish (damsels) can be quite crazy, they do everything they could to get rid of the fish they doesn't like.29g leave not much of choice to the waeker one. And as I am reading ur sig, and saw most of ur fish are damsels, they might causing some problem as well.
Btw clown fish will do that sometime when their mate died, they act a bit diffeent and always stay at where their mate died. Mine even sit at the same location till he died as well. But always check ur water sometimes u really don't want to ignore some of the possibility that ur water causing the death of ur first clown.
 
i took the damsels back to the lfs when i got my clowns i know damsels are nasty i tested my water and it comes out perfect, so you would say max i can have just 2 clowns in my tank?
 
no, thatz not wat i mean. If u really want to see them pair up fast, u can get more than 2 and they will force to pair up but after the 2 pair up, the rest will need to stay away from those 2, or else the paired 2 clown will sometimes be very agressive towards the rest of the clown. Sometimes everything will be fine but there always be some chance the clown u have will be over agressive and end up killing fish.
If u just keep 2 clown in tank, they might take sometime to pair up especially there isn't any danger or bigger fish around. But once they pair up you won;t see any problem . Thatz my take, not sure if i am right or not, but i am doing the same to all my clowns..oh one more important point is don't try to keep 2 different kind of clown together, it won't work in my 75g tank, so ur 29g sure won't make it.
 
Not to step on anybody's toes here, but I think you should figure out what killed your first fish before you add any other ones. From your description, it may have been ick or another parasitic attack. Ick will cause, in its extreme about to die moments, color change in the fish, (bleaching), fin clamping (where the fins are all held close to the body), tattered fins, and death. You should wait at least six weeks before adding any new fish to your tank, just in case it is ick. Also, you really, really should, if you're planning on staying in this hobby, invest in a quarantine tank. Since you've got a microreef, it needn't be a big quarantine, 10 gal would prolly be fine for the fish you can fit in your tank, but unless you plan on buying all new fish every couple weeks, you should look into quarantining all new stock for a minimum six weeks. Many fish diseases and parasites don't become evident for at least two weeks, and it's soo heartbreaking to lose a whole tank full of fish because of one newcomer. I know, I've been there. And remember, a shortened quarantine is almost as bad as no quarantine at all... in aquariums, marine especially, patience is a necessity, not a virtue.
Hope you have better luck in the future.
 
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