First Fish!

Playing a little game of catch up here...life got in the way and I haven't kept up with things here, so I'm working on a few posts to update on recent additions to the tank.  Also, apologies in advance, I haven't yet figured out how to take a decent photo of my tank without everything looking blued-out.  I'll be trying some filters and post-processing in the future to try to remedy this, but for the time being please forgive the blueberry cast over all my photos.

If you read my cycling post (apologies for the length), you'll know that for the past 4 weeks or so, I've had two juvenile ocellaris clownfish.  The plan was always to let George name the fish, but since he's not quite six months old and we didn't want nameless fish for a year, we decided to use the sounds he made in the car on the way home from the local fish store for their names.  And so I would like to introduce Elah, the larger and clearly dominant (above), and Pwa, the smaller double mis-bar (below).


The fish came from my nearest fish store, Old Orchard Aquarium, which to my surprise has an entire section (six tanks) devoted to captive-bred marine fish.  Elah and Pwa come from Sea and Reef Aquaculture in Franklin, Maine of all places.  Anyway, they're a super reputable brand for captive-bred clownfish and dottybacks, and the fish are beautiful.


At the store, the juvenile ocellaris tank had at least 20 individuals, so the fish are well socialized and there was no fear of any one having transitioned to being female, yet.  They are about an inch and a quarter long, although they may have grown a bit in my tank already.


For the first two weeks, I was fairly anxious that Elah (the larger) would kill his tank mate.  There was a lot of chasing, a bit of nipping, and just a generally aggressive atmosphere in the tank.  I posted a video on the Reef2Reef forum and the response that this behavior was natural.  After a couple weeks they've settled down for the most part, although it's clear that Elah is the boss and Pwa falls in line.


I'm excited to watch them bond, grow, and eventually pair, although I can't imagine actually trying to breed them.  I am hoping to develop a Euphyllia garden (torch, hammer, and frog spawn corals) within my tank for them to host.  However, since I understand these corals are moderately difficult to care for, I'll be starting out with a few simpler corals first...post coming, shortly.



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