The Puffer Forum

I have a young porc. puff with a maroon clown fish and yellow tang.

The maroon clown fish is a bit bigger than the puffer. When I feed the puffer pieces of shrimp, the maroon always tends to snag some away for himself, I'm curious if this type of competition will spur on hostility, I can take more caution in feeding them separately if need be, would you advise it?

P.S I think my maroon hosted with my overflow box, he swims by it all day and sleeps beside it floating and drops food near it. Strange lol

Yes, I have & found the clown to be way too vicious to my puffers (6" GSPs). Within 2 days, both my puffer's tails were chewed down to nubs by the maroon clown. I have a pair of B&W ocellaris in my reef tank & the female never fails to bite me in the webbing of my hand.

Folks misinterpret the "nature" of clownfish, because so many of them are "cute: IMHO & IME,they are a family of the nastiest nippiest fish around. Most of them have fairly small teeth, but few fish have sharper ones. I originally got my stainless steel mail gloves to protect me from the female Ephippium clown.

I can attest to those sharp teeth!

Oh my pufferpunk, I'll be careful feeding him then.

I'll keep on eye on the puffer, although my porc. is a pretty tough fish, he didn't take any bullying from my large Volitan back in the day and he was half it's size. I'll separate them if I have to. The puffer has his own cave and the maroon loves his overflow box.

You never know what will happen with fish huh

Oh, & the overflow box is hosting the clown, not the other way around.

john007h wrote:I have a young porc. puff with a maroon clown fish and yellow tang.

The maroon clown fish is a bit bigger than the puffer. When I feed the puffer pieces of shrimp, the maroon always tends to snag some away for himself, I'm curious if this type of competition will spur on hostility, I can take more caution in feeding them separately if need be, would you advise it?

P.S I think my maroon hosted with my overflow box, he swims by it all day and sleeps beside it floating and drops food near it. Strange lol

Maroon Clowns are the devil. They are about as aggressive as fish come,imo. The do not necessarily attack and chew fish up, but they do constantly chase and terrorize.

Maroons do have about the nastiest rep among the clowns.

I put my maroon clown in with my puffers for a week and it caused loads of trouble. It used to take food from them, drop it, then come back and take more.