Clownfish mate selection, keeping multiple clowns in a tank successfully

Back story, on another thread I posted a picture of my 40B that has 3 occ. clowns living in perfect harmony. While it has only been about 4-5 months I've formed the opinion that it is completely possible to keep more than just a pair of clowns together in a tank given the right setup. I felt it was better to move this to where it belongs rather than flooding the other thread with the debate... so here is how it started...

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Originally Posted by rininger85 (Post 2570610) I'll tag myself to help get things going again... Here is a picture of my 40b that is on my desk at work. I started a 20H salty tank first of the year at work, but this summer I decided it was too small so I upgraded to the 40b I think at the end of June. Inhabitants are... 3 ocellaris clowns (they get along perfectly, I originally had the small one in the 20H but had the bigger pair in a sump at home so when I upgraded I brought them in to see if it would work, and the small one must still be sexless because they get along perfectly) 3 blue green chromis, also started with just one in the 20H then added two more after the upgrade. There is some bickering between the original and the new two some times, but for the most part they get along... I noticed they sleep separately though, the original one sleeps by itself, but the rest of the time it is normally hanging out with the other two. 1 yellow watchman goby and 1 tiger pistol shrimp, they were originally in the 20H too 1 sixline wrasse 1 Scarlett skunk cleaner shrimp 2 green clown gobies 1 serpent sea star Some hermits and snails Currently only have 3 kinda of zoas, a few leathers, some brown mushrooms that glow green in the light, A small piece of xenia that had died off in the 20H and just started reviewing a week or two ago, and there is one rock that has a bunch of deep purple or black sponge on it. I need to bring more drags from home but haven't had time to do anything with the tank lately.

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Originally Posted by PhaneSoul (Post 2570647) Lookin good rin. I think you stumbled upon the secret to having more then 2 clowns in a tank, have a pair then introduce a nonsexxed one. Do they sleep and hang out together all the time?

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Originally Posted by Cerus98 (Post 2570663) Eventually in such a small system the dominate pair will gang up on and kill the smaller male. Keep watch for the beggining stages of aggression and be prepared to rescue the little one. My pair took about a year to get to the aggressive point once they paired up. They both attack my hands without fear anytime I go near them now and they don't allow any other tank mate to come near their bubble tip.

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Originally Posted by rininger85 (Post 2570679) I will take a picture in the morning before lights on if I remember. They do sleep all hosting on the same rock. Big mama has a groove between rock and algae that she lays in, the other two hover near her. There is zero aggression. I think that's just a rumor spread by people with no truth behind it the more I learn about clowns. The truth is that clowns are unsexed when they are born. Then as need arises some of the more dominant will become males, then the most dominant becomes a female. If you have a dominant female and a dominant male the others should remain sexless until a need arrives for a new male, or a new female. if you had multiple turn male at the same time, then yes they will fight to the death, but if there is already a dominant female and dominant male there is no reason for the unsexed to become a male. Personally I think the reason it doesn't work out for people more often is because there isn't a clear dominance because of sizes being too close to each other, or the smallest having already become male before they were added together. In the wild there are clearly many clowns living together, you can say that is because there is a lot more space, but they still live closely together in these harems, but again, most clowns in the harem are sexless until either the dominant male or female dies.

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Originally Posted by Cerus98 (Post 2570683) They're actually born male with dormant female organs for if/when the need arises to become female. It's certainly not a rumor - just biology. There have been reefers who've had success in very large systems with a host on opposite ends of the tank but that isn't the norm. Once they fully bond their territorial nature will kick in. Just be prepared to intervene :)

Now this isn't the first time I've put clowns in a tank together. My history of clowns only spans about 3 years, but when I first started I had a single clown in a 10 gallon tank which I ran for about 11 months before I lost power and everything died. After that I upgraded to a 40B and introduced two clowns at the same time as my first fish. One clown was a normal orange occellaris clown, the other was a black ocellaris clown. Both clowns were approximately the same age / size and had been bought from my LFS where they had been reared in a harem of about 20 other clowns all about the same size (each color in their own harem / two tanks similarly set up with about 20 clowns per tank).

Both of these clowns were probably only about an inch long when I added them and for a while they were perfectly happy, but once they started to grow they started their battle for dominance. The black clown seemed to be the more dominant of the two, and even though the orange clown seemed to give in to the black clown's dominance, eventually the orange clown was killed.

A few months went by and I was ready to replace the clown that had died, so I purchased another orange clown. This time the dominance struggle didn't take as long to kick in (there was now a slight noticeable size difference between the clowns because I had purchased a smaller orange clown in hopes that the black clown wouldn't beat it up if it wasn't threatened by it becoming the dominant clown). A few weeks went by with the black clown showing it's dominance and the orange clown just letting the black clown due what it wanted to, it had no fight in it, didn't care to be dominant, then the unfortunate happened, this time it was not the black clown's fault, but my own, I was running a double HOB filter to clean up some algae that I was pulling off rocks in the tank, and as such I was running the filter with no screen on it because it was just getting clogged with algae instead of removing it. I noticed the orange clown was gone, only to eventually realize it had been sucked in to the filter and died. I was pretty upset that I had lost two clowns in such a short period of time that I decided I was going to wait a while before I tried again.

Several months passed until we bought our house and I built my 240 gallon tank. I still wanted to have a pair of clowns, so I decided when I moved my fish in to the 240 was the proper time to add another clown. Again I went and purchased an orange clown that was now significantly smaller than the black clown. I put them in to the 240 together, and again watched a couple weeks of dominance before the black clown finally accepted the orange clown and they paired up. Now these two have been together for about 10 months in this tank and the only aggression now is when I stick my hand in the tank the black clown attacks me trying to defend the entire tank. Again, I realize these time fences are pretty short in the life of a clown that could live to be 15-20 years old, but I believe the reason that I finally had success with pairing these clowns was because the black clown had finally grown to where it was quite a bit larger than the orange clown when I added it.

Next we'll move on to the current 40B with 3 clowns in it that got this discussion kicked off.