Adding a second clownfish

[thepotoo]

I've searched, but can't seem to find the answer to this anywhere.

I have a female black ice clownfish that's about 2 years old and I'd like to add a male, probably regular ocellaris.

If I quarantine the new clown, it will turn female before 6 weeks, right?
Adding a new fish directly to the DT is not an option.

I was thinking about putting the new clown in the QT tank for a week (monitoring closely for ich and velvet) and then putting my existing clown in the QT with him for the remaining 5 weeks. Has anyone tried something like this? Is it a terrible idea?

[Dkuhlmann]

As long as you get one about an inch long, not much bigger you'll be fine. Yes a regular Ocellaris is fine.

[IvanTheTerrible]

I put an existing, larger clownfish trough TTM with a new, smaller clown. No harm to the existing fish and they quickly became "friends" in the transfer tanks and have been together ever since.

-Ivan

[thepotoo]

Thanks Ivan, that's exactly what I was looking for.

Will I have any problem with aggression on removing/reintroducing the existing clown to my tank? Tank mates are a foxface, a chromis, a hippo and a kole tang in a 125. No aggression issues at the moment, everyone has been together for longer than I've had the tank.

[IvanTheTerrible]

Thanks Ivan, that's exactly what I was looking for.

Will I have any problem with aggression on removing/reintroducing the existing clown to my tank? Tank mates are a foxface, a chromis, a hippo and a kole tang in a 125. No aggression issues at the moment, everyone has been together for longer than I've had the tank.

Sorry, I can't help you with the aggression question, as I have no experience with those fish. The only other fish in my tank is a black molly. I didn't have any aggression problems.

[thepotoo]

Update to this:
I bought a new clown and a handful of other fish from liveaquaria. A couple were DOA, a couple were in rough shape. Customer service was good as expected. SG was 1.020, matched with my QT tank, drop of Prime in the bad and dripped fish for 6 hours, moved them over, no problem so far.

Added my existing clownfish to the QT tank on day 2, and they paired in about 30 seconds. This fish was coming from 1.025 and was acclimated over about 2 hours (too quickly, I think)

Day 3 I started feeding live BBS 2x per day. Ammonia still undetectable, new fish look fine, female clown breathing more quickly than normal, but no visible damage to fins, and gill color looked normal.

First tank transfer no problem. Day 5 or 6, the ammonia spiked to around 0.25, dosed prime to remove. I may have dosed too much (about 1.5x recommended amount), but as I understand it, the risk of OD is minimal as long as there is good gas exchange in the tank. No problems with any fish noted, except the female clown is still breathing heavily. Day 8 or 9, I noticed the new male clown flashing on the PVC. Not sure why, googled it and didn't find anything conclusive. The rest of TTM went smoothly.

After TTM completed, I moved them into a 30 gallon fully cycled tank, no carbon, no skimmer, simple HOB filter, SG 1.022 (too high, considering they were coming from 1.020), tons of live rock, still flooding the tank with BBS twice a day.

After 24 hours in the new tank, I dosed prazi-pro. No idea what the female clowns fins looked like here.

24 hours after dosing prazi, I noticed that the female clown was still breathing heavily (she has been like this all along), and now her fins were torn and there was a white thing trailing out of her vent. She would peck at live BBS and flake, but spit it out (never seen a fish recover from this state). Not sure what to do, all parameters looked good, and the fish that had come in in rough shape looked good now.

1 week after the initial treatment with parzi (yesterday), I redosed. I got lucky and saw the female pass whatever was hanging out of her vent. It's a worm. She is looking thin, still breathing fast, and still has torn fins BUT she is eating as of today. SG is 1.022, temp 78, no ammonia.

I'm thinking:
Female was stressed from sudden initial SG shift, picked up worms from one of the new fish, and is now stressed from passing them. OR:
Female had worms all along but was able to keep them in check, but stress from sudden SG shift and new tankmates let them get the better of her.

I plan to continue this dose of prazi, dose the main reef tank with a single dose of prazi (really not looking forward to this part), and release everyone into the main tank in another 3 weeks.

Suggestions? Thoughts?

[thepotoo]

Couple pics. Here's the female clown, showing fin damage. You can't see it in this pic, but she's thinner than she has been, lateral line and skull outline clearly visible.
http://reefcentral.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=340739&stc=1&d=1454271313

Here's the worm. Quite dead. Not sure how many she has passed now, this is at least the second one.
http://reefcentral.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=340740&stc=1&d=1454271313