clown fish

[miked78231]

i have another question about my clown. he/she seems to always dive into the sand and pick up rocks with its mouth just to spit it back out. sometimes it seems like hes looking at me when he does this, other times he will spit it out at the other fish or he will just do it randomly at the rocks or somthing. what is up with this?

[GaryP]

Sounds like a female that is starting to reach maturity. I've seen the same on my female GSM when she started to "go through the change" and reached puberty. I think its probably nesting behavior. She's just redecorating.

[miked78231]

so is it possible that i could be having little baby clowns swimming around somday soon

[GaryP]

I wouldn't count on it anytime soon. It may take another couple of years until she is breeding age. Besides, very few reefers are able to keep the clown fry alive. I know of only one on MAAST and he is a clown breeder. They usually die of starvation or get eaten in a community tank.

[miked78231]

the clown fry?

[GaryP]

The baby clowns are called fry.

[GaryP]

We get posts here all the time saying that their clowns have spawned and asking what to do. At that point there is not a lot they can do unless they want to remove the eggs and give them to some that raises live rotifers to feed them. The fry eat tiny stuff like rotifers and later live baby brine shrimp. Unless you are set up to have that available to them when they hatch and can get them out of the community tank, they pretty much have a 0% survival rate.

We'll get Instar to do a talk about this later this year. He is the breeder I mentioned earlier.

[miked78231]

ahhh.... okay cool. thanks for all the info gary