Lights and anemones

"August West" wrote on Thu, 06 Jul 2006:
I'm a bit leery of the maroon clowns since what I read says they are among
the most territorial of the clowns.

True. Quite a contrast from the peaceful ocellaris, who are so friendly
to the owner and don't bother anyone else in the tank. Maroons are bullies.

They sure are beautiful, though. I am trying to keep the tank as peaceful
as possible (no purple tang, sigh).
If anyone has maroon clowns with other very peaceful fish, please let me
know. If any one has maroon "bullies" please let me know that aswell.

I had a maroon clown _and_ a purple tang in a 55g for a year or two, along
with other peaceful reef fish. No question about it, those two dominated the
tank. That said, everybody "got along" in their place in the hierarchy.
The maroon mostly defended its anemone (and a small space around). The purple
tang wanted to own the whole tank, but was also skittish so it spent most of
its time hiding behind/inside rocks. Unless it was feeding time.

So: both were "aggressive", but not so much as to threaten the lives of the
other peaceful reef fish.

I eventually decided that I preferred a school of friendly ocellaris clowns to
a single maroon, so I traded it back in and now have a small collection of
ocellaris. I don't have the clown/anemone pairing any more, but just the
clowns by themselves are a lot of fun.

-- Don
__________________________________________________ _____________________________
Don Geddis http://reef.geddis.org/
I wish my name was Todd, because then I could say, "Yes, my name's Todd. Todd
Blankenship." Oh, also I wish my last name was Blankenship.
-- Deep Thoughts, by Jack Handey