Bought a pair of ruby clowns in Saturday, they are not feeding and hiding behind the rock as soon as I go near the tank , is this normal until they settle, all water parameters are fine .

Will put a picture later, only paid £30 for the pair from maidenhead aquatics

Ah, those look like Tomato clowns which are much more common. Still seems cheap, but fair play. They're Amphiprion Frenatus.

"Ruby" Clowns are Amphiprion Rubrocinctus, Ruby comes from the name obviously. They're also Australian and far rarer.

If they were labelled as that in the LFS, most LFSs manage to label things wrongly. Nearly all label Psychedelic Mandarinfish as Mandarin Gobys, not gobys! 

I went against the grain with an anenomie and was put into my system after 1 month but I had all the equipment to support it and it's been fine :)

Tank has been running for eight weeks, all water parameters fine, new TMC luminair 900 lights, only got five green cromis and a sand goby, few zoes, tank is 250 Ltrs with 70ltr sump and a nyos skimmer

Tank sounds OK for the nem, maybe someone could comment about your lights.  If it had only been a smaller tank I might have said wait a lil longer, just in case of any potential swings in your levels as you're just coming out the other side of a quick cycle, keep an eye on your levels over the next couple of weeks while you're looking for the perfect nem  just in case! this would be the time you may get a swing having a few fish in there.

ruby clowns are a type of tomato clown are they not ?

They're a very hardy fish so I would imagine they will be fine. a guy u know had a couple and he was useless at the hobby, his water quality was rubbish and he was always losing fish (no helping some people) but his 2 tomato clowns carried on fine. just try and let them settle, don't try and force them out chase after them or anything.

Ref the Nem just be careful. They're funny creatures and can be quite difficult, things are normally fine with them and then they just seem to turn. Bubble tips are definitely the nem to get. I would make sure you're prepared for it though and you know what you're doing. After seeing Martys attitude etc on here the reason his nem is fine and his tank is amazing is because he is obsessive with his knowledge, testing and maintenance. !!!

Ah i see, the colour difference. (every day is a school day).

i see some naked clownfish at my LFS. they were mega money and to me looked like a bloody goldfish haha. i think lightning maroon clownfish, peacekeeper clown, platinum/whitehorse clowns are the things to be breeding though..

Anenomies can be tricky but I have spent hours researching them and the position I placed my anenomie was actually built around its needs.

It has like a cave so it can pull back out of the light if it wants and the base rock under it has really deep crevices so it can bury it's foot deep.

Flow I found also to be very important they need just enough to keep them swaying and to bring some food there way even though they get just about all they need via the zooxanthellae within them.

I do however treat mine now and then to a nice chunk of mussel and it does appreciate it as seen here :)





Stability is also another key thing needed for one if paremeters are swinging like a pendulum then one is going to struggle in my opinion.

Testing I do at least once a week as in a reef tank things do alter as well as need due to growth or new editions.

For example I tested tonight and my calcium has dropped a little due to extra consumption so I have altered doser to now bring it back.up and will check in 2 days where it has gone upto it's only gone down a little but I like it to be in balance with Alk anal I know but I like things to be right.

Having only kept marine myself for 8 months it has possibly been the steepest learning curve of anything I have ever had to learn the guys at Distant Waters have been  great help with advice as well as many hours reading on the net. At first it all appeard very daunting especially dosing ect but it suddenly clicked and it's infact very simple once you have your head round it.

As above I'm still very new to reef keeping so some may find what I have said is incorrect but I have found it works on my system and that has been found by trial and error along the way.

I think people end up complacent in the end with testing water it takes me about 15-20 mins to run a full set of the basic ones longer if I'm checking boron , strontium ect but that's very little time in comparison to what you can loose should it all start going down hill.

A happy system is a regularly checked and we'll maintained system.



I'll shut up and stop rattling on now haha