I HAD a pair of percs....now i don`t.

Sorry to hear, it's never fun to lose any livestock. How can you tell between a male and female perc? I have two true percs but don't know what they are.

 

My understanding is that you cannot tell which is which, but if they are placed into a tank together before one or both "decide" on which sex to be the dominant one will be the female. They will switch genders depending on what the environment calls for.

I have not done much research on it so I am sure there is more information about it.
Sorry to hear Wavers /site/DesktopModules/NTForums/themes/_default/emoticons/sad.gif

 

They will not switch from female back to male. Clown gobies and a few other fish can do that, but not clowns as I understand it. Basically if you have a group of clowns, they're neutral until they mature, the dominant becomes female and the rest remain male. If the dominant female leaves/kicks the bucket, the dominant male switches sexes and a different male becomes the new dominant.

 

So the way I'm understanding this is that it's more of a personality attribute that separates the males and females? How about physically? Any way of knowing? Sorry, I'm pretty clueless about clowns. /site/DesktopModules/NTForums/themes/_default/emoticons/smile.gif

 

Doesn't the female become larger than the male or is that in only certain species, like the maroon clown.

 

Typically the female is larger than the male, but both percs and occs stay pretty small, so they're not necessarily that easy to tell. Although the onyx percs that rachel (diabolijatora or whatever her SN is) has, the female is a little larger than my two occs and the male is about the size of mine, and the rest, which are still sexless, have stayed much smaller.

I don't know how long it takes them to change, but the female is also pretty aggressive towards the male once they turn (thus the untimely demise of the OP's male)

 

I've had 2 occs for 2 years now and one of them is bigger than the other and then the other smaller one does a little dance thing where it goes on its side and tries to get closer to the bigger one. is that the male?

 

the smaller one is the male, sir.

 

The same thing just happened yesterday to my tomato clowns. First the larger "female" bit off the males tail then she killed him. I found his skeleton today. : Although, she is my favorite fish, she is very evil!!!!!
Sorry to hear about your loss.

 

bummer! I wonder if it got blended?

 

Most clown species show an obvious size difference between male and female. The exception being Clarkii family clowns, allardi, clarks, anything that looks like a clark... /site/DesktopModules/NTForums/themes/_default/emoticons/tongue.gif

It unfortunatly can be common for a female to kill her first male. I have not found a link to it, but it may be that she never got full dominance over him. Anyway, I have repaired the female with an unsexed juvenile (all clowns are unsexed until the fill a male or female role) with great success and eventual spawnings.

 

if both were left alone for a while, and both turned female. IT coudl have been the result of the rule of 2 women in a room errr a tank (seriously) they can kill males as has been said.