Clownfish
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40 free Clownfish trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Clownfish are some of the easiest fish in the sea to recognise: small, bright and boldly marked, and almost always hovering beside a sea anemone that would sting most other animals. That odd partnership is only the start. The more you learn about how clownfish live, the stranger and more fun the facts become. This quiz covers how clownfish and their anemones help each other, who is in charge in a clownfish group, how eggs are laid and looked after, what the young do after hatching, the different species and their markings, the threats they face in a warming sea, and the animated film that turned a little orange fish into a star. It is written for curious kids, families, teachers and anyone who likes animal trivia. Every question comes with a short explanation, so you pick up a new fun fact about clownfish whether you get it right or wrong.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What does the breeding male in a clownfish group do when the group's top-ranking fish disappears?
Changes sex
He changes sex: the male becomes the group's new breeding female, and the next fish in line takes over as her mate. The switch can take months to complete.
Q 02What covering a clownfish's body is thought to stop a sea anemone from stinging it?
A layer of mucus
A layer of mucus does the trick, seeming to copy the anemone's own slime so its stinging cells never fire. A newcomer still spends minutes or even days getting used to its host.
Q 03Which fish does most of the clownfish egg care, guarding and fanning the clutch until it hatches?
The father
The father does the babysitting, cleaning the clutch and fanning it with his fins for the six or seven days it takes to hatch.
Q 04Given small and large bits of food in experiments, what does a clownfish do with the large ones?
Feeds them to its anemone
It feeds them to its anemone and keeps the small pieces for itself. The host gets more than meals from its lodger, which also picks off its parasites.
Q 05How do orange clownfish cope when a marine heatwave makes the water around them too warm?
Shrink their bodies
They shrink their bodies to handle the heat stress. Fish that shrink along with their breeding partner have a better chance of surviving the heatwave.
Q 06Sea anemones, the stinging hosts of clownfish, are close relatives of which other sea animals?
Jellyfish
Jellyfish, corals and sea anemones all belong to one group of stinging animals, the cnidarians. Unlike its drifting cousins, a typical anemone lives attached to a hard surface.
Q 07Sea anemones, the colourful homes of clownfish, are named after which kind of living thing on land?
A flower
A flower called the anemone lent its name, because the sea creature looks just as colourful. The sea version is no plant, though: it is a predator that catches prey.
Q 08What is the name of Nemo's overprotective clownfish dad in the film Finding Nemo?
Marlin
Marlin travels a very long way to find his son, and learns on the journey to take risks and let Nemo look after himself.
Q 09Sea anemones grow and heal faster with clownfish living in them, thanks to nutrients from what?
Fish waste
Fish waste works as fertiliser: its ammonium helps the anemone grow and repair itself. The droppings also draw in the tiny light-using microbes that anemones depend on.
Q 10Clownfish see in colour and can also detect which kind of light that human eyes cannot?
Ultraviolet
Ultraviolet light is visible to a clownfish, helped by small gaps between the iris and the lens that let extra light into each eye.
Q 11In Finding Nemo, Nemo's clownfish family lives on the edge of which natural wonder off Australia?
Great Barrier Reef
Great Barrier Reef scenery had to look right, so the film's artists took scuba diving lessons to study living coral up close.
Q 12In Finding Nemo, the captured young clownfish Nemo ends up in a fish tank in which Australian city?
Sydney
Sydney is where Nemo is taken, and his rescuers arrive in style: a whale blows them out through its blowhole into the harbour.
Q 13Which animation studio made Finding Nemo, the hit film that turned a clownfish into a movie star?
Pixar
Pixar made the film for Walt Disney Pictures, and it won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, the studio's first win in that category.
Q 21Clownfish belong to which larger family of mostly small, colourful tropical sea fish?
Damselfish
Damselfish are the wider family, and the clownfish branch split from the rest of it tens of millions of years ago.
Q 22Which word names the biggest clownfish species, whose females grow to about 17 centimetres long?
Maroon
Maroon clownfish females dwarf their mates, which usually reach only 6 or 7 centimetres. The species is also rated the most territorial of all the anemonefish.
Q 23Which clownfish is the least fussy about its home, living in all ten host sea anemone species?
Clark's anemonefish
Clark's anemonefish will settle in any of the ten, and it is also the most widely spread clownfish of all. Several other species accept only a single kind of host.
Q 14Early in Finding Nemo, which predator attacks the clownfish home and leaves just one egg?
A barracuda
A barracuda strikes in the opening minutes, and the single egg left behind hatches into Nemo. The loss is why his dad becomes so anxious about letting him out of sight.
Q 15Finding Nemo's director traced his clownfish story to a fish tank he loved as a child where?
At the dentist
At the dentist, the young Andrew Stanton loved watching the fish tank, and he imagined its fish had come from the sea and wanted to go home.
Q 16Clownfish live across the Indian and western Pacific oceans, but which warm sea has no wild ones?
Caribbean Sea
Caribbean Sea reefs have no wild clownfish, and neither does the rest of the Atlantic or the Mediterranean. The group is thought to have started out around the Malay Archipelago.
Q 17Following about a week of care, at what time of day do baby clownfish usually hatch?
After dark
After dark is hatching time: the babies break out of their egg capsules at night. The eggs start out bright orange and darken as hatching day gets close.
Q 18Clownfish breed all year in tropical seas, with spawning mostly happening during which lunar phase?
Full moon
Full moon is when most spawning happens. Beforehand the male courts his partner by chasing and nibbling her, then holding still with his fins raised.
Q 19Where does a clownfish pair lay its eggs after spending time cleaning the chosen spot?
On a nearby rock
On a nearby rock, close to the anemone that keeps the family safe. Each cone-shaped egg is stuck down by a bundle of short fibres.
Q 20Feeding takes up most of a clownfish's day, and which food makes up most of the menu?
Plankton
Plankton such as algae and tiny animals called copepods makes up most of the diet. Clownfish also nibble the leftovers their anemone discards.
Q 24Why do low-ranking clownfish hold back their own growth and stay smaller than the fish above them?
To avoid being evicted
To avoid being evicted: the fish in charge drive off any that grow close to them in size. Nearby anemones are already taken, so a small fish has nowhere else to go.
Q 25Clownfish keep order with clicks, grunts and pops; which body parts appear to produce the sounds?
Jaws and teeth
Jaws and teeth appear to make the noise, and the swim bladder amplifies it. A bossy fish gives long pulses while it chases; the loser answers with quicker ones.
Q 26Where do newly hatched clownfish spend their first days of life, before settling down as juveniles?
Out in the open ocean
Out in the open ocean, the larvae drift for up to 12 days before sinking to the bottom to look for a host. One kind, the Oman anemonefish, has been carried more than 400 km.
Q 27What do newly hatched clownfish larvae look like, before the famous orange and white appears?
Almost transparent
Almost transparent at first, a larva shows little more than its eyes, its yolk sac and a few specks of pigment. Colour and fins develop as it grows.
Q 28Clownfish guard their sea anemone hosts by chasing off which anemone-eating reef fish?
Butterflyfish
Butterflyfish such as the raccoon butterflyfish like to nibble anemones, so the resident clownfish drive them away. An anemone can live without a guard, though, and many do.
Q 29Warming seas cause which change in sea anemones, seen as the greatest threat to wild clownfish?
Bleaching
Bleaching, the same trouble that hits corals, is known in nearly every anemone species that clownfish live in. Where hosts bleach, clownfish numbers fall.
Q 30Which clownfish, also called the common clownfish, ranks among the most traded marine aquarium fish?
Ocellaris
Ocellaris clownfish made up almost half of all the clownfish imported into the United States in one 2011 count. It is the orange, three-barred fish most people picture.