"Brandonb" wrote in message
...
Inabón Yunes wrote:
Only one question...
How old is he?
Even if they are the same age, usualy one ages sooner. Maybe has a
natural illness or it may have a parasite in his gills.
There are many natural reasons for that behavior. Keep an eye on him
but is he dies, check his gills, and other organs, this will tell you is
the fish just got old!
iy

Honestly, I don't know his age. To save length in my already lengthy
first post there were some historical details left out. I'll put them
he

I started researching setting up a tank and reading and asking a lot of
questions of friends around April of 2005. My 55g tank first started
cycling on Feb 11, 2006. Water is from a 5-stage RO/DI unit from
Airwaterice.com. The Typhoon III with the 75gpd filters. Oceanic brand
salt mix. There's ~40lbs live arag-alive crushed coral (the wet stuff),
started with 20lbs "cured" Fiji live rock I got from a guy that had it in
an established tank for about 5 years, and was cured by myself for about
6 months before going in the tank, and after about a month, on March 8,
06 added 50 pounds "uncured" Fiji and Tonga rock from LiveAquaria.com (I
cleaned off the gunk and debris and rinsed it in some waterchange water I
had before putting it in). I had a heater, a Penguin 700 Powerhead, and
an Emperor 400 filter with no biowheels, but some filter cartridges for
about a week making sure any residual floating debris was gone, then
basically just moving water for oxygenation and an air stone. After about
a month of that, and testing the water daily since cycling began,
everything had been zeroed out for a couple weeks at 0 ammonia, 0
nitrites, 0 nitrates, about 180-300 alkalinity. At least, according to
these test kits:
http://www.drsfostersmith.com/Produc...&N=2004+113074

So after about 2 months since adding water, I got my first fish. 2
tank-bred ocellaris clowns according to the LFS. They were the slightly
brighter shade of orange that's usually associated with ocellaris instead
of the true percula clowns. About a month after that, an aquaintance was
moving and selling off all his livestock and equipment. This included 2
black perculas and an orange ocellaris that he had had for an unknown
amount of time but were pretty much the exact same size as mine. After
about a week or two in quarantine they got added in with my other two
clowns. They were one big happy group of 5 clowns (two black percs and 3
ocellaris, for about 2 weeks until the slightly bigger of the two blacks
and the slightly bigger of my two started diving at each other, but never
nipping. After some research I figured they probably had started making a
"female" in each group before they were put together. It was always the
larger two of each doing it. I figured dominance. So the two blacks got
put in my quarantine tank, and the three orange stayed in my 55.

So basically since the end of April/beginning of May until now, the three
orange clowns had been one happy family. Always swimming together in a
group, sleeping in a group in the upper left back corner of the tank on
top of a power head, eating together, etc. They pretty much never even
went down to the level of the rocks or below unless a piece of pellet
food made it down that far before one of em grabbed it. So it was just
odd that two days ago the sudden change and the one (I'm pretty sure its
the one that was with the two black percs originally) was hiding in the
bottom right back corner wedged in some rocks. I tried putting him with
the black percs again but they just attacked him immediately as well and
was back to hiding. He's now in a tank by himself and so far seems back
to normal and happy and isn't doing anything odd.

Poster "George" mentioned that they may be spawning. So far they have
stayed toward the top of the tank as usual and don't seem to be doing
anything weird in the substrate.

Brandonb

Not necessarily spawning just yet, but likely pair-bonding. These fish, in
my experience, mate for life, so once they've bonded, they establish a
territory and defend it. I say mate for life, but my first pair of maroon
clowns (male and female, I got at the dame time). They paired right away.
But about 5 years on, the male got sick and died. After about six months,
a bought another, and the two bonded, and have mated numerous times since.
The female is now about 15 years old. The male is 10 years old.

George