Today was just a crazy day.  A week in the making, I owe a bit of thanks to Jonica and her husband Scott (rest of her name withheld for privacy).  They provided the impetus for a day long road trip from Duluth to the Twin Cities region to pick up another massive female Maroon Clownfish.  This one happens to be a Gold Stripe Maroon (Sumatran form).  She’s pretty darn big, although the “Labrador” female from Frank & Mary has at least another 2 inches on her!  Thanks for this great donation to the cause.  She’ll have a good home here!
As you may know, the *plan* for whatever big female I could find was to place her on the other side of the eggcrate with the “Morse Code” Maroon in the hopes of applying social pressure to test the sexuality of the Morse Code maroon, and hopefully keep it a male if it still could be a Male.
Let me say now that the Morse Code Maroon continues to decline despite being hit with both Maracyn and Maracyn Two in combination.  So I’ve now thrown three antibiotics at this problem with no resolution.  It’s a slow progressing infection, but frankly, I hate to see fish suffer for so long.  Here’s where things looked tonight when I got home.


Now, I must say that I’m toying with swabbing that with Hydrogen Peroxide.  At this point, what else can I really do?!
Meanwhile, there is no way, and arguably no point, to introduce the new female Gold Stripe Maroon on the other side of the divider.  The Morse Code is lethargic to the point where social pressure isn’t going to do a darn thing for it.  There’s no positive upside at the moment to risking the GSM, so instead, she was placed into one of the QT Tanks with one of the smallest 3 PNG Maroons.  Submission was instantaneous on the part of the little Maroon, so it is safe to say that at minimum, this one small PNG Maroon will remain male until called upon for service!

IF by some crazy chance this pair happened to spawn, I may opt to rear the babies solely for practice, but all of them would be humanely euthanized.  This may sound very cruel, but the reality is that such offspring are possible “hybrids” (there has been talk in the past that the Gold Stripe Maroon could be reclassified as a different species).  Regardless, they would be a mixing of color variants / races, which for all intents and purposes is something fish breeders should strive to avoid.  Afterall, I could hypothesize that the resultant offspring could turn out like either parent, or more likely a muddled version of a GSM.  And the reality is they wouldn’t be discernible by the average hobbyist or even most breeders.  In other words, there is NO upside to releasing such a fish into the hobby.  So yes, they would be put down.  But at least I would get some valuable experience rearing Premnas larvae.  Long term though, this temporary pairing will be split up, and each fish ultimately placed with an appropriate mate.
Meanwhile, I finally found the time to do a bit of eggcrate and zip tie fabrication.  The Lightning Maroon has been given a larger, more spacious home with a better view and the ability to better interact with the Labrador Maroon.  If they couldn’t see each other before, now they can.  The new eggcrate cage is pretty substantial.  I’ve heard stories, I think one told to me by Carl Kmiec, of clownfish being able to fertilize a spawn even when separated by eggcrate, even several inches away.  Could that happen in this situation?  Who knows?!

That’s going to be it for tonight!  Catch you tomorrow!