Millions of children and adults fell in love with clown fish after seeing “finding Nemo” making them a very popular pet. Unfortunately many of them didn’t know how to keep clown fish and the result was that the clown fish died in a matter of days or weeks after having being purchased. Many bought new clownfish that died just like the first ones. The demand for clown fish became so great that the clown fish today is endangered in large parts of the world. This might make it sound like clown fish are hard to keep and that you shouldn’t keep clownfish in aquariums but this isn’t the case at all. Clownfish are hardy fish that make great pets if you just make the effort of learning how to care for them before you buy them. Large quantities of clown fish are captive bred each year and you should always buy one of these to preserve the wild populations. If your local fish store can’t tell you if he sells wild caught or captive breed fish you should go to another store. The first thing you should do is to decide which clown fish species you want to keep. This can be done by looking at clownfish pictures in a tropical fish gallery online, but if you want to keep a “Nemo” clownfish I can save you the trouble and tell you that you are looking for a Percula clown fish.

Read everything you can find about keeping clown fish and about keeping aquariums in general before you get an aquarium. The more you read the less is the risk for problems down the road and if problems do arise you will know what to do about them. Never assume that you know how to do something just because you know how to handle similar problems. An example: The fact that you know how to control algae in pools those not mean that you know how to handle algae in a marine aquarium. It should also be said that the fact that you know how to keep freshwater fish does not mean that you know how to keep marine fish. It will however make it much easier for you to learn how to keep clown fish and other marine fish species.

Once you have done your homework you should hopefully be able to keep clown fish without to much problem and you should be able to handle the problems that might arise.