- Hi, guys and girls, I'm ReefMan,
and this is all about the clownfish.
There are about 30 species of clownfish.
They're spread out into two different genuses,
all in the same family.
So, we have the Premnas genus,
which is only one species, the maroon clownfish.
Now, all of the rest of the clownfish are Amphiprion,
which includes all the common clownfish
that you would keep in your tank,
things like the tomato clown, the Ocellaris, Percula,
those are the two most common by far clownfish that we keep.
They're all in the Amphiprion genus.
Amphiprion Percula is identified
by 10 dorsal spines on the fin,
while Ocellaris has 11.
So, if we look at the fin of my clownfish here,
we could count them, or try to at least,
and you'd be able to identify the species.
Now, keep in mind that a lot of times,
what you buy in the pet store for clownfish
are actually hybrids
because there's a lot of selective breeding going on
to get special banding.
The traditional clownfish just has three bands
across its body and they're all solid, they don't intermix.
There's just three bands of white
and then an orange background.
Obviously, in breeding,
they've created all manner of stripes
that merge and combine and are spotted
and all sorts of things.
So, these are gonna be harder to identify
on a species level because they're really
probably a mix of the two species at some point,
or at least very selective breeding.
So both Percula and Ocellaris
were both identified first in the 1800s, I think 1802.
For Percula and Ocellaris in 1830,
both of them were identified by French naturalists.
Ocellaris was identified by Cuvier, and he is notable
because he's also the father of modern paleontology.
There are no clownfish in the Atlantic Ocean.
They're all Pacific fish.
And they are widespread throughout the entire Pacific.
Although, depending on the species,
the individual species might be only found
in a small part of the Pacific Ocean.
Because clownfish are so widespread
and so common, especially Percula and Ocellaris,
they are a great beginner species
for your home saltwater tank.
They take just normal temperatures, nothing special,
upper 70s, low 80s is fine, and normal salinities.
And they are going to be very forgiving
to maybe not the most amazing water quality.
They eat almost anything that you could put in the tank,
between flakes, pellets, frozen food.
If you can get it in your fish tank
as appropriately sized piece,
your clownfish will probably eat it and do just fine.
There are also damselfish, they're in that family of fish,
and they are quite territorial as breed fish go.
They are more than willing to bite you
when you put your hand in the tank, if you're in their area,
and they will certainly fend off their anemone
or whatever might be to other fish.
All clownfish are actually born male
and as they grow, if they're the dominant fish,
they turn female,
which means that if you go to your local fish store
and you buy two very small, immature clownfish,
one of them will become the dominant one
and become larger than the other,
and that larger one is going to be the female.
In the wild, they pair up
and then they live for the rest of their life as that pair
and they might live in an anemone.
In the wild, clownfish are found in anemones,
and there'll be a main pair of clownfish in that anemone.
There might be other subordinate clownfish in that group,
but they are not mature, they don't breed,
and no one really knows why these other clownfish
don't just go out on their own to somewhere else
where they could meet another clownfish
and start their own group.
The theory at least though is that if you're in a group
and you're not the dominant fish,
eventually, that dominant fish is gonna get eaten or die,
and then you can move up a level, and so on,
and eventually, you are the dominant fish in that anemone.
But it's not been proven
and no one really knows why clownfish do this behavior.
That's an interesting study opportunity for someone.
As I mentioned, clownfish in the wild and in your tank
like to host anemones.
In our tank,
they most often are going to host Bubble Tip Anemones.
That's the most common kind of anemone that we have.
But they'll host all sorts of other things.
They'll host the corner of your tank,
your powerheads, your heater, your algae scraper.
All sorts of things in your tank
can be hosted by a clownfish.
In the wild though, there are two kinds of anemones
that they actually prefer to host.
It's Heteractis magnifica,
which is the Magnificent Sea Anemone.
And the Stichodactyla gigantea,
which is Giant Carpet Anemone.
Those are the two kinds of anemones, the only two,
that clownfish are commonly found in in the wild.
Nobody really knows exactly how clownfish survive
the sting of the anemone.
There are a bunch of theories though.
The two leading theories
is that they just evolved to resist the sting
and they do get stung but it doesn't hurt them.
The other theory,
and I think maybe a little bit more likely,
is that the slime coat of clownfish
is actually sugar-based instead of protein-based.
And that makes the anemone not see the clownfish as food
because it rubs up against it, it detects sugar,
a slime made out of sugars,
instead of slime made out of protein.
And you know, you'd expect a fish
is made out of protein and muscles,
so, anemone would go the same route
and not sting something that it doesn't think is food.
They have done tests,
where they removed the slime coat of a clownfish
and then put it into a tank with an anemone.
When it guess into the anemone, the anemone eats the fish,
so there's definitely something to the slime coat,
although there's not been enough research done
to really nail down exactly what it is
about the clownfish slime coat
that protects them from their anemones.
Clownfish are one of the few fish
that you can reliably breed
on your own in your home aquarium.
If you have a pair and you're taking good care of them,
so, feeding them regularly, good water quality,
eventually, they will lay eggs and those eggs will hatch.
And it's just up to you
whether you want to pull those eggs out
and raise them on your own or not.
And that's why clownfish
are really one of the original captive-bred fish
that you can get for your tank.
The clownfish in my tank are captive-bred.
They're not wild-caught.
And I think the more that we can do
captive-breeding programs, the better off.
We breed a lot of dottybacks, a lot of gobies.
I'm starting to get some Pygmy Angelfish.
Those kinds of things, captive-bred.
But clownfish really started it all.
If you're interested in trying your hand
at marine fish breeding, the first one to start with
is really going to be the clownfish.
The eggs hatch after a few days.
I think it's four to seven days after they're laid.
And if you, say, put a ceramic tile in the tank
near where the clownfish are,
they're likely to lay the eggs on that tile.
Then you can remove them from the tank,
take them off into your tank
that you're gonna raise the larva.
And the trick is really being able to feed them.
So, there are other fish,
like I mentioned, angelfish, all sorts of things,
that will breed in the tank, and that's not the hard part.
The hard part is getting the newly hatched larva to survive.
So, you'll have to grow some algae cultures, copepods,
things like that, to be able to feed
these brand new, tiny, little fish larva.
And then after a week or two, they're big enough
to eat newly hatched brine shrimp, things like that.
They kinda, you know, as they grow,
they can take bigger and bigger things,
but it's just those first dew days,
the first couple of weeks
that really is the difficult part for clownfish.
If you're interested, there is a whole bunch
of resources out there on raising larval clownfish.
And really, the hard part
really is just having the food for them.
So if you think that's something
that you would be interested in doing,
I really encourage you to go out and look at how to do that.
There's a wealth of information out on the internet.
Hope this was interesting.
I think just about all of you probably have had clownfish
or do have clownfish in your tank.
I'd be curious to know if I missed anything,
things that are interesting
about the clownfish that you have.
There's all different kinds of species.
I've only ever had maroon clownfish
and the Ocellaris and Percula,
but there's all sorts of other kinds
of clownfish out there as well
and they're all similarly easy to keep.
So yeah, until next time.
Thanks for watching.
Don't forget to like and subscribe. Bye.