Bubble Tip loved to death...lost tentacles, still attached?

[foxandhound]

Well, my maroon clown has aggressively loved his anemone to the point of injuring it and maybe causing it a slow death. Im not sure... :uhoh3:

I have had the nem for about 5 months and it was thriving! The clown discovered it one day and began hosting and taking names! Then the clown started to nip/eat the tentacles and bash into the nem repeatedly and aggressively. I tried to catch the clown and I just couldn't. The nem was accepting food for a while (silversides, rogger's reef food), but has now stopped.

He has now lost about 75% of his tentacles, but he is still attached to rocks. He still opens and closes, but he doesnt come up for light or flow.
I have ordered a fish trap to trap the clown and it should be here soon, but I dont think the nem will survive.

What should I do???? Is this guy going to nuke the tank soon?

During this time, I did a real deep cleaning of the sump, skimmer, etc etc. I think I caused the tank a tiny cycle because I had a sudden, but very, very slight rise in ammonia (less than 0.25). Is the nem releasing ammonia or is my tank cycling? :facepalm:

Everything else is zero, all corals thriving, all livestock happy and eating well. I have a 75 G tank, 4 Bulb T5 and one 48'' LED Stunner Strip in Royal Blue.

 

[Ron Reefman]

In cleaning the sump, etc. you probably stirred up some 'stuff' into the water and got some ammonia. It's probably not a big deal as long as it goes away quickly. I assume you have enough LR?

Catch the clown and get it into a different tank. If you can't net it (which is always next to impossible), buy or borrow a fish trap (I have 2 and loan them out to other club members regularly). I had a tomato clown that wouldn't go in the trap (I tried for 2 weeks). I ended up taking a very small fish hook, nipped off the barbed tip and filed to a clean point. I didn't feed the tank for a day and the next day I put a small piece of shrimp on the hook and dropped the line in the tank. The clown hit the hook within 5 seconds. I pulled her out and moved her to a different tank for holding. The hook didn't even go thru her jaw and there was no damage or side effects afterwards.

If the BTA has any tentacles left, it should survive. I had a condy lose 90% of it's tentacles in a powerhead while setting up a new tank and in 6 months it was almost back to normal, in 9 months you'd never have known anything happened to it.

Good luck.