Clownfish picking on new carpet anemone.

[SimilanRocks]

I have a female true percula clownfish, and a male false percular clownfish pair. They are hosting in a big xenia colony. I just added a yellow carpet anemone next to the xenia for a week. The anemone seems to adjust to the tank fine and looks healthy. A few days after the female clownfish started pushing head in to the anemone. The anemone now retracts and moves a bit. Do you know why the clownfish is doing that to the anemone? It doesn't look like it wants to host to me.

 

[GSMguy]

Yellow carpet???
can you post pics?

 

[ReefWreak]

Is she picking on it, or just rubbing up against it? If just rubbing up against it, it could likely be the acclimation process to go live in the anem. It also depends, because not all clowns live with carpets in the ocean, so it'll be a tossup as to whether or not they'll host it. But I doubt that they're maliciously picking at it or eating it.

Clowns always need to go through an acclimation process to build up a mucuous coat to get used the the coral/other animal that they're going to live in. My clown went through this procedure for my torch coral before living in it. He got stung so bad in the first two days that I didn't think he would make it. he got popeye really bad, and burns all over his body. They went away after living in the torch for a week or so.

 

[SimilanRocks]

The female clown is pushing it head in to the anemone mouth. It doesn't seem like trying ti rub it body witht the anemone tentacle, which is where most of the nematocyst, stinging cells, are located. The clown also do the same thing to my scolymia. Could it be that the fish somehow associate the mouth of anemone or coral as food source? Should I try moving the anemone before any permanent damage?

 

[dorm_reefer21]

if you say you have a yellow carpet then i think the clown trying to acclimate to it is the least of your worries. there are no naturally occuring yellow carpets, (haddoni, mertensi, or gigantea.) i do believe you have a bleached specimen, if it lives you will undoubtedly have a unique animal but it should be watched carefully for signs of wasting.
the clownfish shoving his head into the mouth on the other hand is normal. my clowns shove their faces in my bubble tips mouth all the time, i dont understand why, it seems pointless but they seem to enjoy doing.

 

[Yunachin]

I have also heard of clowns that will clean the mouths of the anemone hosts. This is a possibility.

 

[SimilanRocks]

The anemone look like this. And I often saw yellow ones in LFS.
http://www.infinitysoft.net/Reference/RefDB/Record.asp?ID=2307
http://store.fishsupplyunderwater.com/cay00-20101.html

I thought yellow is common color for carpet anemone. Now I'm wondering if I have an unhealthy one???

 

[GSMguy]

Yellow carpets are usually dyed yellow.

 

[SimilanRocks]

nobody asked if it dyed.

 

[SimilanRocks]

I tried to feed the anemone last night. The food sticks to the tentacles but looked like it couldn't carry food to the mouth. Then I tried to put the food on the oral disk, and it swallowed the food very quickly. The clownfish is still putting mouth in the anemone oral disk, saw it took some digested food out this morning. Looks like it's taking advantage of an unhealthy anemone