Clown school

[digital-audiophile]

So after my loss yesterday of my 2 year old perc to a jumping accident I picked up a pair of false clowns to go into my tank. I love clowns and would be sad to have a tank without them. I'm actually thinking however of getting two more to make a small little family. Since they would all be the same size (very small - oceans has a tank full at a great price!) I would imagine that as they grew one would become female and one the dominant male and the other two would stay a bit on the outside as males in waiting.

It is a 90G so there is a decent amount of space, I do have a GBTA to host the clowns if they decide to pay attention to it.

I would love any advice from reefers that have kept multiple clowns and any pros or cons before I go ahead and add a few more.

Thanks in advance for your help

[adidas]

a school of clowns would be awesome...i have an empty 120g here...giving me some ideas

[digital-audiophile]

I have like the tank at Fuji Yama (Great Japanese restraunt donwtown) and they have a couple little shoals of Clowns in their tank - its huge like 280ish Gallons - and the clowns look pretty cool in their little pods.

I'm just not sure how well long term clown families work?

[adidas]

i've never done it, but i would think the best way would be to introduce them all to the tank at the same time? wonder if that matters

[fishoholic]

I would think they would need to be introduced at the same or very close to the same time for them to all get along. I don't known about clowns but it's that way for my tangs.

[michika]

I looked into this when I set up my 230g a couple of years ago. From all my research (80% textbooks, 20% internet [Canreef, ReefCentral, etc.] I figured that they all need to be added at or around the same time, and need to be in groups of more then 7-10 (depends on the source). There seemed to be a general concensus that adding 3 will trigger the death of one clown, as one of the three will differentiate into a female and choose one male as a mate. The female would then kill the non-mated male. Granted this was just stuff I've read, and I never did try it out.

However, I have kept 3 separate types of clown pairs in one tank, tomato, ocellaris, and panda. It was just a matter of introducting them at the same time, or rearranging the rockwork/environment upon introduction of a new pair.