anemones for the babies?

[saltburns]

Folks say that tank bred clown fish may never go into an anemone. I know nothing about breeding clowns, so this may be a stupid question, but do breeders ever keep anemones in the tank.

 

[Coelli]

Not true! There's a local guy in my area who breeds some great clowns, "designer" and whatnot. I picked up a couple of his babies from an LFS. On our local forum he said to get them a BTA, put them all together in an acclimation box, and they'd host it. Sure enough they did after a couple of days and when it was time for them to graduate to the DT, I moved the anemone first and then brought the acclimation box to it and they swam right to it. Sometimes they get separated from it since they are so small compared to the DT (usually happens at night, or when one drives the other out since they're not paired yet, but as soon as they find it again they snuggle right up. The trick was putting them all in close quarters to start out. And I gotta say, baby clowns in their anemone is pretty freaking adorable.

 

[Azedenkae]

Folks say that tank bred clown fish may never go into an anemone. I know nothing about breeding clowns, so this may be a stupid question, but do breeders ever keep anemones in the tank.

They are less likely to go into anemones, this has actually been documented in scientific studies. Of course, 'less likely' is a far cry from 'never', so there you go.

In my experience that is definitely true, but really, there are so many factors that play a part in whether a Clown would go into an anemone that it's hard to determine why a Clown would or would not go into an anemone in any particular situation.