Quote:
Originally posted by Tagamet
A fellow recently posted to my saltwater list that it was ok to put a "school' of clowns (>5) into a tank all at once and that one the female and male were established that the others would be ok.
Is this true? I just need to be sure before I try to respond to him further. (I asked for a reference to support his thought.)
Tagamet
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In the short term yes it will work. In the long term, in a confined environment, it may result in problems. In the wild, clownfish form hierarchies with a mature breeding pair and lower ranking sexless fish. The lower ranking fish will try to promote themselves sooner or later. This is not a problem within the ranks of the sexless fish, however when a member of the breeding pair is challenged, the challenger will either succeed by driving off or killing it's rival, or it will fail in its challenge and be driven off or killed. And this is where it can become a problem in a confined tank environment, no place to be driven off to...
Something that so many people forget about when they start thinking about doing a hierarchy of clowns. Clownfish can live for decades and having a more or less peaceful hierarchy for a few months or even a couple of years is no great measure of success considering these fish can live 10-30 years.
I have yet to hear of any credible stories of long term successes in keeping a hierarchy in anything less than a public aquarium sized tank. I am not saying it is not possible, but so far no one has stepped up and said “I have six A. whatever_species of clownfish in the same tank for five years without any deaths or stress related disease outbreaksâ€.