Yes or no? Placing two clowns in a nano

14g nano with approx 10lbs LR.

I added a Ocellaris clown, almost a inch long, in the tank a couple days ago. Doing just fine. My wife found a Maroon, the exact same size, at the LFS and wants to add it as well. Anyone see a problem with this considering they are both tiny? No anemone has been added, yet, and there is no other livestock in the tank.

I understand they will grow but I have much larger reef tanks available when that times comes.

Thanks for any advice.

 

well maroons usually need at least 30 gallons and they'll probably fight. if you introduced them at the same time then maybe there wouldnt be a problem

 

i think it would be fine while they were young, but when that maroon grows up it will prolly kill the occ clown..they are more territorial and get quite larger than percs and occs..

 

No way! no mixing clown species sorry. You can really only have a pair of clowns, of the same species. The pair must be established right a way though. Basically, clowns are born asexual. If you place a single clown in a tank, it will turn female, often within a month. Then it is too late to pair. If you place two immature clowns in a tank, at the same time, generally, one will turn male and the other female. This depends on the species though. Ocellaris are pretty easy to pair, Maroon's, for example are very tough to pair, too aggressive, tend to kill each other. Maroon's also get very big. I have one that is about 6", you'll need to move to a big tank, but the Ocellaris won't survive with it in the nano. Sorry...

 

yeah i agee..just get another occ that is similar in size and they should pair if they are babies..

 

i have two percula one ocelaris and a maroon clown in my tank and they go perfectly fine together, i believe it would be perfectly fine to add the maroon. in fact its probably good so then the clown isnt completely alone, ive heard they dont do as good by themselves.

 

You right about not mixing species. Unless you have a huge tank.

But you can still pair if you have a single female. I had a female in the tank for about 6 months. Added a small male and they paired up fine. So once you have a female it not to late.

 

They do just fine by themselves. And even if it was fine to mix clowns, which its not. His tank is too small. In large tanks where the different clowns can get there own territory it can be done. You either have a large tank, or you have been lucky so far. Either way I would not give new people that advise, as it will most certainly end bad.

 

I noticed you said yet when mentioning a nem, idk if id put a nem in that small of a tank. You might run into problems, but I'm still a noob, so id ask around about that too.

 

Thanks for the quick replies. Interesting information so far.

I am new to the forum but have been keeping reefs for about 10 years. I just started back recently. I am very new to these nano tanks (biocube), however. They didn't exist back when I stopped having reefs.

Thanks again.