Clownfish ate my BTA!

brad

Active member
I have 3 tomato clowns, and last year I bought a rose BTA at a frag swap. Excited, I dropped it into the tank, and watched my clowns attention instantly fixed on the anemone. My joy turned to horor as I relized the clowns were tearing the anemone apart! I rescued what was left and moved it to my frag tank, and for a while it looked like it might recover, but slowly shrank and disappeared.

I am going to try another rose BTA this year (Same frag swap). Any idea what happened? Any advice?

I am going to try to net any clownfish that does the same, and move him to my frag tank.
 
3 Tomato's?? That's a whole other issue, but I think there could be problems with that. Anyhow.....

That really sucks to hear they murdered your anemone. I have read Tomato's can be semi-agressive clownfish. No firsthand experience.

My opinion? Don't buy small , tiny clones. Buy a big anemone that can host all of your clowns and so they all have equal space to move around in it. Perhaps they all wanted a piece of that other one and were fighting for it? That's a wild guess.

But I think if you can have a big enough anemone to hold all clowns then they may not do that again. However, if you see them being rough on it , take it out... or, put something over it so they can't keep biting at it.

Good luck..
 
well clowns do bite the tenticles of an anemone but I have never hear it devouring it. I agree with OCDP that you need a big anemone that can hangle abuse from three clowns.
goodluck
 
I have read of this happening several times (can't find the references at this time). The concientious thing to do would be to research this phenomenom (perhaps at wetwebmedia) and proceed accordingly. My gut feeling is that this will continue to occur and thus I would discourage you from getting another rose anemone for these particular fish

edited;

see here for an example: http://www.melevsreef.com/pics/0404/rbta.html
 
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