With the largest brain to body ratio of any living fish, these gentle giants are under threat. With the largest gender size discrepancy in the animal kingdom, a male blanket octopus weighs 40, times less than the female. Home The Reef Animals Clownfish Small and colourful, these famous fishes have one of the most interesting symbiotic relationships. Kingdom Animalia. Phylum Chordate. Class Actinopterygii. Order Perciformes. Family Pomacentridae. Genus Amphiprion.
Clownfish on the Great Barrier Reef. Habitat and Diet. Symbiotic Relationship. Well, as you can see, that hardly would have suited the plotline of a Disney-Pixar film. For fish the bigger the female, the more eggs she can lay. And this relationship is exponential—a fish that doubles in size may lay 10 times more eggs.
So, by starting off as male and then transitioning to female when big, clownfish maximize the number of eggs a female can make. This is important because clownfish need both parents to tend to their eggs—which isn't the case in all fish species. But in clownfish, females lay eggs on the seafloor, and both the male and female must take turns to clean and guard them.
So, there is a need for strong coupling; the two fish depend on each other. Sperm is cheap to make, so a small male can make plenty of sperm to fertilize all a big female's eggs. This is why switching from male to female makes sense for clownfish—it works for their specific mating strategy. Clownfish eat the leftovers from fish on the anemone and algae.
The leftovers include copepods, isopods and zooplankton. Clownfish have a few ocean predators, but their greatest threat is humans. People who catch clownfish and keep them as pets in aquariums are making a mistake. There are only ten out of more than one thousand types of anemone that are able to host these fish. Many people put the fish in a tank with the wrong anemone.
In captivity, the clownfish can live from 3 to 5 years. In the wild, they live 6 to 10 years. Symbiosis describes the special relationship between clownfish and sea anemones. They are the only fish that do not get stung by the tentacles of the sea anemone. Clownfish have a slimy mucus covering that protects them from the sea anemone. However, if this covering is wiped off of a clownfish, it will get stung and possibly be killed when it returns home to the anemone.
The clownfish and the sea anemone help each other survive in the ocean. The clownfish, while being provided with food, cleans away fish and algae leftovers from the anemone. In addition, the sea anemones are given better water circulation because the clownfish fan their fins while swimming about. Amphiprion percula. Clownfish live at the bottom of the sea in sheltered reefs or in shallow lagoons, usually in pairs. Clownfish have a special relationship with the anemone and are very important to them.
They are a large help to the anemone as they clean the anemone by eating the algae and other food leftovers on them. Amphiprion ocellaris eggs are orange and relatively small in size. With the eggs released, the male then passes over the nest and fertilizes them.
Once the eggs are attached, the male become their prime caregiver. The males job is to fan the eggs to increase the amount of oxygen interacting with them, as well as to eat any unfertilized or damaged ones in order to keep the nesting site clean. The hatching period for the eggs often depends on the temperature of the water. On average, however, the eggs hatch between six and eight days. Once the eggs have hatched, the pelagic larvae are independent from their parents.
This larval stage lasts anywhere from 14 to 21 days.
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