Solomon Percula

[ThRoewer]

I thought to start a thread about these as I have and have had quite a few of them. All were wild caught.

This were two of my Solomon percula pairs back in Germany. They were some of the first Solomon percula to arrive in Germany in the late 90s.





In the following my current pairs.

A. percula pair 1

I have no accord to where these came from - nobody at the store knew - but from the color pattern they are either from the Solomon Islands or Papua.
These are the guys responsible for me getting back into reefing after a 10 year break.



They had been sitting in the coral tanks of Neptune Aquatics for several months and nobody took them. So the day before Thanksgiving 2014 I got them and decided to set up a new reef tank (in that order).
When I finally picked them up 3 weeks later they came with a nice Cryptocaryon infection that allowed me to practice my disease management skills.

They are the weirdest clowns I ever had and crazy picky eaters.
They also seem to be extremely picky about their anemone. So far I tried a BTA and a H. crispa but they ignored them both and rather settled in a ceramic flowerpot. My last offering to them will be my new S. gigantea, which I think is what they wanted all along.

BTW: the male has now colored up and is as black as the (potential) female

A. percula pair 2

These are confirmed Solomon Island percula. I picked them up at Aquarium Concepts in Dublin last Saturday. They had been at the store for a week and the original male to the female was in a rough shape (either brook, velvet or a serious bacterial infection) and she chased him away all the time. So I rather took the healthy looking male in the next compartment and he was clearly a good choice as I have no problems at all with him.
Both got dipped for 45 minutes in a formalin solution of 10 drops (~0.3 ml) of fishvet Formalin MS in 2 quarts of saltwater.



After the female started breathing rapidly and started scratching I gave a dose of CP to the tank. I also added PraziPro because she had stringy poo and all the other signs of intestinal parasites. The downside of this treatment is that all fish in the tank, with the exception of the little guy and the marine betta, stopped eating.

This was them last night.



The male is tiny compared to the roughly 3 inch female and I suspect that he will color up like Pair 1.


Yesterday I picked these guys out of a direct Solomon shipment that arrived Wednesday night at Baja Reef in Union City:



I dipped them in formalin like the previous pair.

A. percula pair 3



These guys will likely color up like Pair 1 when they grow up. So far they haven't been the best eaters, even with live tigger pods.

A. percula pair 4

I took these because of the coloring. The little one was pretty beat up but the only other one with this color scheme so I decided to give him a chance. But because he was so beat up I got a good deal on him.





This is them today, stuffed up with tigger pods:

[Ginger bay]

Very nice clowns. Nice color, body shape, head, fins, does the colors usually stay?

Good luck with the new pairs.

[ThRoewer]

Thanks!
I never had them lose color but I also never had them in a H. magnifica or E. quadricolor (or any anemone so far for that matter).

These were some babies of the ones in my avatar. Unfortunately they had a little bit of a boxer face. At that time they were about 3 cm long.

[CoralsAddiction]

Nice clowns. Check out this thread for Solomon clowns. There are some pretty cool pics in it and useful info.
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/sh....php?t=2431541

[ThRoewer]

Originally Posted by CoralsAddiction

Nice clowns. Check out this thread for Solomon clowns. There are some pretty cool pics in it and useful info.
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/sh....php?t=2431541

Interesting thread with nice pictures from the wild.
BTW: Steve at Baja Reef told me that the wild Bali percula actually are from the Indonesian part of Papua. They have right now some that look precisely like my pair 4. I was actually thinking of getting one of those but decided to rather make a pair from only one shipment.

[CoralsAddiction]

I think that Papua and Solomon clowns are fantastic. Sure wild onyx clowns are unique and gorgeous but I also like black true percs like your pair #1. Which is why I opted to get one when I saw it at Vivid Aquariums. Mine is very small, about 1" or 1 and 1/4" at most.

[ThRoewer]

They are my absolute favorites since I saw this picture on the cover of Gerald Allen's book Damselfishes of the World:



I wanted a percula pair before but didn't know they were that different from ocellaris.

I always took a copy of that picture with me when I went to a fish store and bugged them to find me a pair. When finally Solomon percula got imported they were all either just the normal orange color form or onyx like the ones in my avatar.

[CoralsAddiction]

Also, looks like Aquarium Concepts has stepped up its game lately stocking a blue haddoni and some nice true percs. I visit it two or three times a year when go to the East Bay Area. Every time I went there all they had was a few designer clowns and some RBTAs as far as clownfish stuff goes.

[ThRoewer]

Designers are still what you find most find there (actually in all stores around here). And if they have true percula it's mostly the deformed garbage from ORA.

Neptune Aquatics usually has some small percula that look like wild and usually come from QM or other importers that have wild ones.

Though AC is always a place worth visiting because they get rare stuff and sometimes don't know it

[CoralsAddiction]

This is another Solomon Pair I had. It came from Quality Marine as a "true pair". The male died from Brooklynella. My current juvenile true percula is going to look exactly like them.

[ThRoewer]

Nice ones.
How long after you got them did the male come down with brook?

[CoralsAddiction]

Originally Posted by ThRoewer

Nice ones.
How long after you got them did the male come down with brook?

3-5 days. They dove into my Crispa as soon as they were placed in the tank.

[ThRoewer]

Pair 1 in January while in treatment



And this is them about 3 months later:



It's the same pot and it looks like they have grown quite a bit despite not eating a lot.

[ThRoewer]

Originally Posted by ThRoewer

How long after you got them did the male come down with brook?

Originally Posted by CoralsAddiction

3-5 days. They dove into my Crispa as soon as they were placed in the tank.

I had it usually show up within the first 3 days in QT. Actually, most of the time you could see the first symptoms like accelerated breathing and clamping fins the next day.
If they made it for a week without a brook outbreak they were usually OK.

In fact most of the time you can see it already in the store if they may come down with something.

[ThRoewer]

Little update:

Pair 2 hit the one week mark and finished the 1. round of praziPro. The female started eating again, but not as much as before. She is still way too skinny for my taste. The little male never stopped eating and is doing quite well.

Tried feeding Mysis for the first time to the new guys today and both of pair 4 were eating like pigs until they had round bellies. And even then they would still go after live tigger pods.

Pair 3 took some Mysis but were both very picky. Also these two don't eat a lot and still have slightly fallen in bellies.



Pair 3:





Pair 4:

[CoralsAddiction]

Looking good. I might try finding some live brine shrimp tomorrow for my Solomon Onyx.

[ThRoewer]

Pair 3 is still a bit troublesome with feeding. I give them Mysis and they take a few. In that regard they are exactly like pair 1. Those also don't like Mysis but rather prefer brine shrimp or pellets. After all this time I got tired of them being such divas and for now they won't get anything but Mysis. They either eat them or go hungry.

Pair 2 and 4 have no problems with Mysis. Especially both of 4 stuff themselves with whatever I feed them.

One interesting thing: the larger and smaller one of pair 3 are always together in the pot, even at night. With all the other pairs the male has to sleep outside for now.

[ItsTheNano]

just picked up a wild caught pair yesterday i'll try to post pics tonight

[CoralsAddiction]

SoCal is definitely getting flooded with Solomon Clowns.

[ItsTheNano]

Originally Posted by CoralsAddiction

SoCal is definitely getting flooded with Solomon Clowns.

is that large carpet from the aquarium in culver city?

yup a lot of solomon clowns i heard that they got in a big shipment since last week.

[CoralsAddiction]

Originally Posted by ItsTheNano

is that large carpet from the aquarium in culver city?

It sure is

[CoralsAddiction]

I doubt I'll be buying more. If my onyx makes it I will pair it up with the black true perc. If not then I will leave my current pair intact.

[ThRoewer]

Damn, I gotta get down there - they got all the good ones and we got the scraps

[ItsTheNano]

Originally Posted by CoralsAddiction

It sure is

that thing is huge lol & thr price is even crazier!

do you keep all your clowns together?

[ThRoewer]

It doesn't look as big as this one: