Changing a female clownfish back to a male???????

[Ms. Mermaid]

Okay I hope this is possible. If you find a somewhat juvenile clownfish at a LFS and seems to be the dominate one “possible female” of the bunch that is the in the tank and you try to pair her up with a much older fish that is a female would it be possible for the younger one to turn into a male?
The one at the LFS might be 1 ¾” maybe a year old if that and the one trying to pair it up with is over 3 ½” and about 3 years old.

[KING]

Know matter what..A female clown will not ever turn back..Sorry..

[350gt]

But are you sure the one at the lfs is even a female?

[Kristy]

Here is my response: theoretically it MIGHT work, especially depending on how juvenile the small/young clown is. But there are pretty good odds that it would not work and the bigger female might kill the smaller female-in-transition. So be aware and weigh that in up front. Also if you want to do this for breeding purposes, it would take that much longer for the small female to be developed as a male and ready for fertilization. Doesn't seem worth all the risk unless you are purely experimenting to see if it can be done.

The reason I think it might work is that I have personally witnessed some interesting gender transformations with fish in my care. We have added a fully male lyretail anthias to a pair of females who lost their male a day before. It has taken three+ years but that male has changed from hot pink back to orange and no longer has that spike on his top fin. Literature says this cannot / does not happen but it did. And I met a guy in Dallas who witnessed the same thing with anthias in his care. I've seen some similar transformation of angelfish and wrasses. So maybe - especially if your female was in process and not fully transformed. But the odds are awfully slim.

[Ms. Mermaid]

With my luck the odds would be very slim... But I do know the one at the LFS is maybe at least a year old maybe tiny bit older but not by much.
There was a male "smaller" little guy if I put him with my breeding female how long will it take him to know what he is supposed to be doing?
I am getting ready to swap out my male that I have with the female. He is either not fertilizing the eggs properly and he is eating them as well.
They just laid a fairly nice size clutch last Wednesday and now as of lunch time there was like 15 eggs left in the pot if even that many.
Seems to have gone from bad to worse since I moved them from the DT last Aug 2013 to now.