Placing clowns together

Everything I have heard is no. Chaos will ensure and some will end up dead. That is the general rule, however I am sure that someone, somewhere, has done it successfully.

I mean, if they attack you, imagine what they would do to other clowns...

 

I currenly have 3 pair of clowns that started together in a 72g bow: pair of false percs (original clowns), pair of black percs and pair of skunks clowns.


The orange were aggressive to me prior to my introduction of the skunks - now they spend their free time chasing the skunks and leave me alone for the most part.


The blacks were introduced when they were very tiny (might be the key) and have always gotten along with the orange clowns. To this day the 4 percs all hang out together in the tank.


-Eric

 

See, like I said, somoene has done this successfuly.

I would still be cuatious with the fact that the ones currently in there are su agressive. Maybe get a small quarantine box that sits inside your main tank so that the new introductions can be seen and the existing clowns start to get used to them.

 

I think your main problem will be with the dominate clown from each tank not liking each other.

 

It did not work for me in a 120g. I added them at the same time. One female jumped out of the tank while I was at work.the other little boy she tolerated.....

 

I had 2 pairs they got pushy in the beginning, in the end they shared Nems, I also had 6 BTA's and a lot of Hammer Coral & Frogspawn and they hosted all of it...

 

I can only say, that I did not seem to have any concerns, I never noticed any aggression with my Black Clowns, both sets were seemed to get along. Like people have said before, not every fish is the same..

 

from what i have heard is three clowns tops all introduced at the same time...one alpha male, beta male, and a female...any more then that and they will eventually pick one another off until there is only three or two left. although...i was at the omaha zoo last year and they had a aquarium full of clown fish. not sure what their success rate doing that is though as i was just a one day visitor...my guess is that they have bad luck doing tht but replace them frequently and the zoo visitors dont know the difference.

 

i have read a little more on this topic since this was posted as i was one for wanting a tank stocked with nothing but different varieties of clowns. like blackx-runner mentioned having them from the same spawn seems to increase your odds of doing this and also from what i have read it seems tank raised clowns are more likely to be housed with multiple clowns successfully as opposed to wild caught. from my understanding wild caught clowns are more rare these days due to the popularity of finding nemo...so maybe the old rule of thumb of having only a pair of clowns per tank needs to be re-tested for validity...perhaps everyone is just under the assumption that only two is the limit.

the tank i saw at the omaha zoo with the clowns was the sharpest thing i have ever seen...i am guessing the tank was a 90 gallon or a 120 gallon and it used white dead coral for its aquascaping and had anywhere from 50-75 clowns swimming in it and the contrast between the dead coral and the clowns was simply beautiful.