Description

Spine-Cheeked Anemonefish or Maroon Clownfish, is a species of Anemonefish that is found in the Indo-Pacific from western Indonesia to Taiwan and the Great Barrier Reef. They can grow up to be about 6.7″ inches.

Like all Anemonefishes it forms a symbiotic mutualism with sea anemones and is unaffected by the stinging tentacles of the host anemone. It is a sequential hermaphrodite with a strict sized based dominance hierarchy: the female is largest, the breeding male is second largest, and the male non-breeders get progressively smaller as the hierarchy descends. They exhibit protandry, meaning the breeding male will change to female if the sole breeding female dies, with the largest non-breeder becomes the breeding male.

The Maroon Clownfish or Spine-Cheeked Anemonefish’s natural diet includes algae and zooplankton.