Debating on trading Clowns

G

GoVols1983

New member
I have a pair of ocellaris clowns that I have been trying to get to host in an anemone mor about 3 months to no avail. My LTA was destroyed by a vortech last week and I'm trying to decide whether to trade my occelaris clowns for a species that will more likely host in an anemone or should I try something like a bubble tip or carpet and keep the ocellaris clowns? Either way I will be waiting until my 75 is up and stable (moving over from a 20 long to 75 with 40B sump next week). So it will be a while, but I wanted to go ahead and get ideas now. Any suggestions.
 
You could spend a million bucks on clowns and anemone, and it all depends on what they want to do.

I have a set of clowns that love the carpet, and I put a carpet in with another set of clowns and they don't go near it, and its been months. I have one set of clowns that I have tried about every anemone you can find and nothing.

Good luck.
 
IME, some species seem to take to a host more readily than other (clarkii and frenatus-complex clowns, for example). If you want the closest thing to a sure bet, I'd get a pair from one of those species complexes and house them with a bubbletip or two.
 
GoVols1983 said:
I could always get two of each clown species and one of each anenome and let them duke it out for total dominance
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I hope you're not serious. These are living beings, not BattleBots. They can and will suffer if they're forced to "duke it out." Just pick a species that you like, get one pair, and choose the appropriate anemone (but bear in mind that of the hosting anemones, only BTAs are relatively easy to keep--but still require high water quality and stable conditions).

To answer your earlier question--clarkii are aggressive. Most of the species that are natural symbionts of BTAs are, although I've heard that akyndinos are relatively mellow. I've never kept them, so I don't know if that's actually the case.
 
Haha. I was just kidding. I'm on the fence with keeping the ocellaris and trying a more difficult but more natural host like a carpet, or getting a pair of Clarkii's with a LTA.
 
GoVols1983 said:
Haha. I was just kidding. I'm on the fence with keeping the ocellaris and trying a more difficult but more natural host like a carpet, or getting a pair of Clarkii's with a LTA.
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Good. :) Sorry if I jumped all over you--sometimes people will say things like that here and actually mean it!

If you want a carpet, you might could check the selling forum, as well as the forum for your local reef club. People regularly break down tanks and have anemones for sale. The advantage of this is that you get an anemone that (as long as it's in good shape) is already acclimated to captivity.
 
My LTA was destroyed by a vortech last week
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A healthy LTA, a sand bed anemone, got destroyed by a VorTech is an impossibility IMHO. Are you sure you want to try to keep a harder to keep anemone?
 
It was healthy. Too small of a tank and my 16 month old got a hold of the vortech controller and cranked it to 100. The LTA posted up right under the vortech. As stated earlier. I am not going to attempt another until I move to the larger tank.
 
I've had a pair of percula clowns for over 4 years. Can hardly get them to leave the upper left corner of my tank. I put a sebae anemone in last june and save for one or two nights (my female was rolling all over in the anemone) they want nothing to do with it. I just recently added a beautiful good sized S. Haddoni bout month ago. My bangaii cardinal hosts that. Lol. So yea, I guess its hit and miss with the hosting thing.
 
Hi it took my gfm months before they went until anemone..but now i xan put any kind of anemone in with them and they go right for it...u could get a breeder container and put them both in there.that should work...gl though.
 
bobby415 said:
u could get a breeder container and put them both in there.that should work...gl though.
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It's always a bad idea to try and force clownfish and anemones together. The anemone may end up stinging the clownfish to death, or even eating it, if the clownfish goes into it too quickly. There's a period of acclimation they have to go through first.

On top of that, the anemone will have to be removed from the breeder container and placed in the tank, which increases its chances of wandering and getting caught in a powerhead or an overflow.

Just let things happen at their own pace. There is no way to "make" clownfish go into an anemone before they're ready.
 
skinsfan1 said:
I've had a pair of percula clowns for over 4 years. Can hardly get them to leave the upper left corner of my tank. I put a sebae anemone in last june and save for one or two nights (my female was rolling all over in the anemone) they want nothing to do with it.
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I've had a similar experience, our first tank 2 years ago was a 29g biocube, we got a T. Percula and a Sebae Anemone, Clownfish didn't want anything to do with the Sebae. We traded in the Sebae for a RBTA because we wanted to do some corals and the Sebae liked to move, still nothing with the Bubble Tip, the T. Percula would sleep in the top left corner of the tank.. We even tried a few tricks and tips, we isolated the clown and the anemone together in a bucket, we tried to feed the clown near the anemone, nothing..

So we let it be and we soon forgot about it, we upgraded to a 75g after a year with the bio-cube and we really wanted a Maroon Clown for the deeper red color, so we traded in the T. Percula, for a Maroon, hosting at this point wasn't even a thought in our mind, plus the LFS guy said that because the Maroon Clown was tank bred the likely hood of it hosting in the Bubble Tip may not ever happen, we loved the look of the clown so we figured we just weren't destined to have a clown hosting anemone..

Well low and behold we put the Maroon in the tank in the evening, sure enough just swimming around paying no attention to the anemone, woke up the next morning, fed the fish, went to work. When I returned home from work I couldn't find the Maroon Clown. I thought she jumped out and the dog ate it, low and behold she was all up in the Bubble Tip.. It really is hit or miss..

Frank
 
Thanks for all the feedback. So basically I gather that there is no guarantee, so I will probably just keep my pair and possibly try a bubble tip or another anenome.
 
Well since my I made the decision to keep my pair of ocellaris clowns, one of them jumped ship. I found him about 5 feet away from the tank after work. I am moving into the 75 this weekend and I am going to order another pair of clowns(returning the Lone Ranger ocellaris). I am debating between a true percent pair and a clarkii pair. Any input on the two? I like the look of the clarkii's better, but my reservation is aggressiveness. Just how aggressive are they?
 
I was going to do clarkii's in my carpet tank. They are cool looking and I don't mind a little feistiness:) But I found a sweet pair of skunks who took to my two gigs in a matter of hours.
 
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