Clownfish bully attacking partner

[HomerJ]

Hi all:

Some of you might have seen one of my post about (what I thought at the time) my clownfish going nuts when my lights would turn on.  I was blaming my blue ReefBrite.  Turns out it's been off for a while, but the aggression continues.

The smallest clown takes a beating for no apparent reason, to the point that it now looks like a chunk of one of its gill has been bitten off.  The clown just lays low in the corner of the tank, and all of a sudden, the bigger one darts towards it and appears to "bite" it.

I have had these clowns since before Xmas, and it is the first time I have noticed this.  There is only one other fish in the tank, a cherub angel.  The angel is too sweet, it looks like it's trying to protect the smaller clown by swimming between the 2.

What should I do.  Is this "normal" territorial behavior?  Is the dominant fish simply trying to establish that it is the boss? 

I'm tempted to take one of the 2 clowns out and into my QT tank, but I am worried that it will start all over again when I put them back together.

What do you all think?

[NanoSF]

You can try taking the aggressive one out and put it in the QT.  When it goes back into the main tank it might not be as dominant. It is normal for this aggression to happen, but it can happen to varying degrees. This sounds like it is quite severe.

[bandit]

funny I just added a blue reef-brite and my female percula chased the male around like crazzy as if she dosnt recognize him anymore . Ive never seen her so aggressive.  Luckily the male is much faster and can get away easy.  I saw the male stop swimming away and do a big vibrating dance and she seems to have calm down.

[Cbellehumeur]

I have an aggresive clown also and she is able to kill with in 8 hours so i don't think yours has the intent to kill or the other one would be dead by now. I have had to remove her into a QT and add her after the other fish has gained some territory.

[Severum]

From left field... Maybe the reefbrite caused something in the smaller clownfish to click and it started morphing to a female. 2 female clownfish in the same tank = problems.

[Tsukiyomi-sakura]

From left field... Maybe the reefbrite caused something in the smaller clownfish to click and it started morphing to a female. 2 female clownfish in the same tank = problems.

That is what I was thinking aside from the fact, There clownfish, part of the damsel fish family so aggression is not uncommon, when I had my two pairs both of the females would kill anything else.

[HomerJ]

Well I managed to pull out the bully last night.  Not sure if it was just a fluke, but I tried catching her for about half an hour with the lights on.  No luck, she was too fast.

Waited about an hour after lights out.  Scooped her with the net in about 5 seconds!

She is in my QT tank now.  I'll let her think about what she did until the smaller clown heals up... and I'll see if I can reunite them then.

[lost_at_sea]

it's completely natural... the female only wants strong males to mate with, unfortunately i went through 1 juvi-male clownfish because of this.

In the wild the female will have several juvi's with her so the 'bullying' will be spread out and less focused, the strongest of the juvi's will become a male and begin mating with the female.

You were wise to remove her from the tank for a week or so, although i may have removed the injured male so you could treat him with some melafix or something... regardless keep them separated for a week or two until he's healing up then reintroduce them. 

IT WILL continue to happen until they sort themselves out, all you can do is wait it out... in the end you will be rewarded with a mated pair of clowns.

[HomerJ]

Small update, I have reunited the 2 clowns, and so far, it looks like they are happy to see each other.  No signs of aggression, they swim around together, it almost looks like they are playing!

A few days ago, I moved the frogspawn they used to host in.  The smaller clown got used to its new location, and when the bully went back in, it appeared confused to find Xenia in the old place, but carefully moved to the new frogspawn location, and looks happy now.

Hopefully things will stay like that.  Regardless, the smaller clown had time to recover, which is what I wanted.  If they start fighting again, I'll let them do it, I guess that is nature!