Clownfish

[Daniel454]

I am thinking of buying clownfish but cant seem to find anything to help with what i need and how to care for them properly coudl you help ? thanks

 

[rdd1952]

Hello and welcome to the forum.

If you're talking clownfish as in Nemo, then you should post in the saltwater section. If you me like clown loach or clown pleco, then someone can probably help you.

On a side note, I see your "Group" is "Validating". You will need to open the mail you received from TFF when you registered and click the link in it to validate your membership. Otherwise, you will only be able to post in a very limited number of forums. If you can't find the email, You can have it resent by going here.

 

[mister-t]

clown fish are brilliant fish,and may i say hillarious and amazing to watch,they are prone to white spot
especially if water conditions are not ideal,they do grow extremely large so large tank needed,and at the least you would need a pair,have had my 5 clowns now for 3yrs,they can live for a very long time
easy to care for,and they love snails,any more info then do reply,
mister-t

 

[Daniel454]

Thanks for helping me i just bought the tank can someone sell me in detail what else i need thanks

 

[sophos9]

Thanks for helping me i just bought the tank can someone sell me in detail what else i need thanks

Are you setting up a tropical or marine tank?

 

[Daniel454]

marine one .... Whats the difference ?

 

[loachman]

marine one .... Whats the difference ?

salt mainly. but also water parameters and costs. some equipment is different, some teh same.

You need at least 20 gal for a single clownfish. They are all born as un-sexed and if no male is present, one (the largest) will become a male. If no female is present, the largest male will become female. There is no going back in clownfish land. 2 females will fight and one will be killed off, similarly with 2 males and a female. Clowns like to move up the ladder so typically a lesser fish will challenge a higher ranking one at some point down the road and one will be killed.

The point, usually you want up to 2 and make sure they're different sexes/sizes unless juveniles.

Maroons are very aggressive, tomatoes (and similar) are less, and the pecula/ocelaris are less but still semi-aggressive.

You don't need an anemone and probably shouldnt get one. They are MUCH harder to care for than fish.

 

[sophos9]

marine one .... Whats the difference ?

LOTS!

Water type, water parameters, filtration methods, lighting, feeding, water test kits, circultation.... the list goes on and on! I really suggest that if you are serious and dont know the difference, you head over the to saltwater section before taking a step further!!

 

[Daniel454]

Do any of use have msn so i can add so i can ask you alot more questions please

 

[SJ2K]

Your best bet is to do some independant research this is not the sort of thing you can learn all about by chatting to one person over msn

 

[Thirdfloor]

I must agree with SJ2K. There is so much you will really need to know and understand. Talking to one or 2 people on MSN isn't going to teach you everything you need to know, but reading articles and forums like this, as well as using Google, etc. can give you a very good knowledge to work with. Ask as many questions as you want, they will get answered here, and you will get good answers too. Please understand that keeping fish, whether fresh or salt water is a fair responsibility with required maintenance and upkeep, its not just something you can set up and forget about.

P.S. Welcome aboard!

 

[andywg]

marine one .... Whats the difference ?

LOTS!

Water type, water parameters, filtration methods, lighting, feeding, water test kits, circultation.... the list goes on and on! I really suggest that if you are serious and dont know the difference, you head over the to saltwater section before taking a step further!!

These sorts of posts are not entirely correct. Let's take these one at a time comparing a basic Fish Only (FO) tank with a FW tank:

Water type: Yes, there will be marine salt added to the water

Filtration Methods: Doesn't have to be a difference just to keep clowns, a cannister, power filter or even UGF will work well enough

Lighting: This is immaterial for just keeping fish in a marine tank

Feeding: Buy marine flakes instead of freshwater

Water Test Kits: The only test which is necessary that changes IME is ammonia (nitrite, nitrate and ph are all the same whether FW or SW)

Circulation: 5x per hour (as recommended for FW) would be fine in a Fish Only SW tank.


All in all there isn't really any great difference between SW and FW when considering the most basic of tanks. The differences only really start to appear when you are trying to keep sessile inverts.

 

[sophos9]

The OP asked what the difference was, I was using typical examples of the differences....

Water type: Yes, there will be marine salt added to the water

Yea, just bung it in with the fish, that will be fine, how much? Dont worry about that.... Lets not get too picky, I think if a poster genuinely does not know the difference between marine and fresh water then the correct forum would be a good place to start

Here are a couple of links with varying information....

10 steps for FO

My very own Nemo

And a couple of good books...

The Reef Aquarium, Volumes 1 and 2, Delbeek, Charles and Jules Sprung
The Conscientious Marine Aquarist: A Common sense Handbook for Successful Saltwater Hobbyists. , Fenner, Robert and Christopher Turk

 

[Musho3210]

go and check out the marine section, much more people that talk about saltwater than there are here.

 

[andywg]

The OP asked what the difference was, I was using typical examples of the differences....

Water type: Yes, there will be marine salt added to the water

Yea, just bung it in with the fish, that will be fine, how much? Dont worry about that.... Lets not get too picky, I think if a poster genuinely does not know the difference between marine and fresh water then the correct forum would be a good place to start

FO and FW is adding marine salt to an SG of somewhere aroun 1.018 and above. I wouldn't class that as "LOTS!", would you? And I wasn't detailing how to set up the tank and what each parameter should be, just pointing out what the real differences are, rather than the perceived ones thrown about by people.

Here are a couple of links with varying information....

10 steps for FO

The above site makes the classic mistake of assuming the oceans where the fish we keep almost never change. I recommend reading Scott Micahel's ecperiences of diving and how he noticed the marine environment around reefs was far from the non changing entity most aquarists assume it is.

I myself was snorkelling in Fiji recently and the lagoon I was in had huge variations in temperature as the sun warmed up the smaller body of water and then cooler water flowed in from the ocean at high tide. I witnessed heat shimmers due the large temperature difference. Did the fish avoid these areas of substantial parameter change? No. They swam straight theough them without noticing, and these were Butterflyfishes, genreally considered as somewhat delicat in the trade.

I am also unaware of a pH under 8 being deadly to fish, I know my FO marine tanks seldom read above 7.8, so I somehow doubt that claim. If you look at point 5 of the link it talks about Live Rock, There is no Live Rock in a Fish Only, if you use Live Rock you have a Fish Only Wioth Live Rock (FOWLR).

My very own Nemo

I have complained more than once that almost all the pins down the bottom of this forum only handle more reef based settings and that none point out just how easy a SW tank can be to set up. Some have suggested I should write a pin, but as you will see below, how to set up a SW tank is hardlt worthy of a pin.

And a couple of good books...

The Reef Aquarium, Volumes 1 and 2, Delbeek, Charles and Jules Sprung
The Conscientious Marine Aquarist: A Common sense Handbook for Successful Saltwater Hobbyists. , Fenner, Robert and Christopher Turk

The first book is a reef aquarium book, unlikely to be all that great for a FO set up. Bob Fenner's book is very good, but does someone really need to read books before setting up a simple tank? If someone wanted to set up a small FW tank for a few neons would we send them out to read books, or point out just how simple it is?

All too often people on this board people try and p[oint out the huge differences between FW and SW when in reality there is not that much until you start looking at keeping inverts. I have noticed the worst of these (and I am by no means pointing the finger at you here) tend to be from people who have only kept FW.

As an example of how easy it is, I shall do the entire set up of a FO tank below in easy step form:

1) Get tank, fill with substrate and dechlorinated tap water and heat to temperature;

2) Add filter and then add salt until SG is around 1.018 or above;

3) Toss in a frozen prawn, or add flakes, or add pure ammonia so that the filter media can start to get online;

4) Measure the ammonia and nitrite levels until they have peaked and fall back to 0;

5) Buy your fish and put it in the tank.

That is it.

Take out the point about salt at point 2 and you have a simple FW set up. That is how little the difference is between the two.