Hey guys, I know this is going to come off as a 'new kid' question but this is bothering the hell out of me and its an aspect of keeping clowns I've never quite understood.
I recently purchased a bonded pair of onyx percs. The 2 were inseparable, never leaving each others side. I had them about 2 months before they started to clean their anemone's rock and the male jumped out one night.
I quickly went out and picked up a ~1.5" picasso I'd had my eye on for a while at the store by my work and added him to her tank. She chased him around for a day, he started to do his vibrating dance and now, a month and a half later, they coexist like two roommates in their 15gal tank together. There is virtually no aggression, aside from the occassional nudging, and the 2 swim together often but they never sleep together. Most nights he sleeps about 4" from the edge of her anemone while she is buried deep in her BTA's tentacles. By morning when I wake up he is sometimes still there but more often he is near the top right corner of the tank while she is always still in her anemone.
My experience with clowns is limited to pairs that were bonded prior to coming to me. I've got little to no experience forming my own bonded pairs. When you go online all it says anywhere is that, if the 2 are of different sizes, the process of pairing is very easy and fast but I can't seem to find details about the process between meeting and actually bonding.
Can anyone shed some light on this for me? What must happen between meeting and actually bonding? I've seen many loosely defined 'pairs' in stores and people's homes that are not bonded but simply what I'd call roommates. They don't fight but are not a pair. What is the difference between creating a pair of roommates and bonding two fish?