HELP! Is my female clownfish not interested in my male?

Ariel Nier

New Member
I’m not sure how this website works considering I signed up for it just to ask these few questions. I’ve had my salt water tank running for a year and a half. When I was first introducing fish to it I got two Ocellaris clowns, two Chromis and a watchman/pistol shrimp pair. They’ve all been doing fine up until recently my female clown died. Soon after (maybe 2 days) we went to our local pet store and got another clown. I will admit I messed up and got one that was slightly bigger than than one I have but they are roughly the same size. They do fine and she enjoys swimming around and she’s quite happy and so is our male. The only issue is he wants to pair pretty bad with her (ex: twitching, following her around, not leaving her side) but she seems either not interested or annoyed. We put her in a breeder box still in the tank and away from him over night and when we released her she finally started to fight back and tell him to back up, nothing too serious. My male is a fancy Ocellaris and she is a Picasso Ocellaris so them both being Ocellaris shouldn’t be the issue. Is it possible she just isn’t into him? They rarely fight he mostly just twitches to her. Is there something I should be doing different?
 

Ariel Nier

New Member
It's possible "she" is still a he, and they won't pair up until after the transition is complete.
How would I be able to tell is she was male? When we bought our “female” she was the only one in the tank so I’m assuming someone must have dropped her off which is why I was assuming. I know it takes a little while for them to transition but is there a way to know the actual gender? Sorry if that’s a dumb question..
 

Humblefish

Active Member
How would I be able to tell is she was male? When we bought our “female” she was the only one in the tank so I’m assuming someone must have dropped her off which is why I was assuming. I know it takes a little while for them to transition but is there a way to know the actual gender? Sorry if that’s a dumb question..

All clownfish are born male. As they grow/mature some will turn female, but once the change is made, they can’t go back to being male. If you put two baby clownfish together then what usually happens is one stays relatively small (the male) while the other grows exponentially (the female). The female is always the larger, more dominant clownfish.

Whenever I have a lone male what I always do is buy a much larger clownfish of the same species to give me the best chance of getting a female.
 

Ariel Nier

New Member
All clownfish are born male. As they grow/mature some will turn female, but once the change is made, they can’t go back to being male. If you put two baby clownfish together then what usually happens is one stays relatively small (the male) while the other grows exponentially (the female). The female is always the larger, more dominant clownfish.

Whenever I have a lone male what I always do is buy a much larger clownfish of the same species to give me the best chance of getting a female.

That’s how I knew mine was a male, he was smaller than my old female, and I ended up buying a bigger clown in hopes of it being a female too and she was the only one in the tank when we bought her so I assumed. We left her out last night and he isn’t constantly on her anymore and he’s giving her some space now, I’m sure it just took them some time to get used to each other, but thank you so much for your help!!
 
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