How is the hosting instinct on your designer clowns?

cody6766

cody6766

Super Best Friends!
Premium Member
I'm clown shopping and I'm waffling between Picassos, DaVincis, Platnium and something wild. I'll be adding them to a tank that is being set up to be primarily a clown/nem tank, so hosting is obviously important. I know captive bred clowns are less likely to host than their wild caught counterparts, and I've observed that first hand. I had a black and white female that showed no desire to live in anything until I added a small male that took to my cup coral. She sleeps in it, but doesn't really live in it. In contrast, I had a pair of Bicinctus clowns that took right to an anemone as soon as it was added to the tank. I miss those clowns.

I'm sure my tank raised blacks aren't as far removed from the wild gene pool as the 'designer pattern' clowns are, so I'm a little worried that the cool pattern will come at the cost of anemone interaction.

So, what do you have and what do they do? Wild/Tankraised, species/morph, all things are helpful. Even if they've taken to a powerhead instead of an anemone, that's something to help me along in my decision.

Thanks and Merry Christmas
 
Took less than 2 weeks for my tank-bred Onyx juvy clowns to be hosted in H. Crispa. I'd say that's a pretty good showing, considering some never become hosted.
 
It is hit or miss. I had a pair premium blacker ice clowns and they jump to the nem within 30 minutes. However, a local guy sold his designer clowns because they would never come near the nems and he has like 7 huge one :-)
 
Go with wild caught. Can't beat the body shape and hosting instinct IMO. People get all caught up in the color patterns and overlook the fact that many of the designers have smushed noses and stubby bodies.
 
I've had no problems with my designer clowns going in anemones; i've had snowflakes, picassos, black snowflakes, bw darwins all go in anemones in 2 weeks or less.
 
The hosting instinct of clowns is no different between wild and captive bred. While there may some visual cues, finding a host is done via smell. Captive bred clowns do not lose this innate sense.
 
It is not wild caught or tank bred. It is what fish and what anemone. You must match species of clown to what species of anemone
 
D-Nak said:
The hosting instinct of clowns is no different between wild and captive bred. While there may some visual cues, finding a host is done via smell. Captive bred clowns do not lose this innate sense.
Click to expand...

I respectfully disagree. Although I agree that hosting is partially instinctual, there is undoubtedly a learned component to the behavior. It is only logical that a wild harvested clown that has spent its entire life in an anemone will figure out what to do with an anemone in a captive environment much more quickly than a fish that has never seen an anemone before. At the danger of appearing to simplistic, I like to analogize the hosting instinct to an itch. While both captive bred and wild clowns may equally feel that chemical "itch" when in the presence of an anemone, the captive bred specimen will have never known what it feels like to "scratch" that itch, while a wild caught specimen does.

Can a captive raised specimen figure it out? Sure. But on average less often and less quickly than a wild caught specimen.

I also fear that as we breed successive generations of tank bred clowns, we will slowly breed out the hosting instinct. Because anemones are not essential for survival in the captive environment, evolution will cease to select for clowns with strong hosting inclinations. Think of dogs. As we bred generations of domesticated wolves, dogs as we know them largely lost most of their predatory instincts (because such instinct was not evolutionarily necessary - they were being fed), while wild wolves continued to exhibit strong prey instinct.
 
My captive bred pearl eye clarkii was in a bubble tip within a minute of being in the tank. IMO wild caught vs tank bred has nothing to do with it. Give any captive bred species a natural host and they will be in it very quickly.
 
My captive bred ocellaris and captive bred percs immediately went to my mags. And they weren't in tanks with anemones and very likely had never been with an anemone in their lives at the point I bought them. The same for my captive bred maroons and BTAs. I think it is very much an instinctual thing and not learned.
 
Anecdotal accounts of rapid hosting of tank raised clowns is not particularly helpful and may very well be cooincidence. For each such success story, I have heard of many in which tank raised clowns don't host despite the presence of one or more natural host anemones.

Again, I'm not saying it can't or doesn't happen that tank raised clowns host quickly. All I'm saying is that on average, your best bet for hosting will be a wild caught clown with a natural host.
 
From my experience younger tank kept can host immediately. you just need one that have the instinct and the other will follow. An older one which i threw in with them that never seen an anemone just swam around it with curiosity but that's as far as it went since she started fighting. this is from one experience though.
 
Last edited:
addictedreefer: "For each such success story, I have heard of many in which tank raised clowns don't host despite the presence of one or more natural host anemones."

I've heard lots of accounts where tank-bred almost immediately adopted natural host species. I've heard of only one that I can recall where it took a week or so for a tank-bred to gravitate to a natural host.

I've observed a tomato clown that I had happily living in in an LTA, abandon the LTA for a BTA (natural host) as soon as the BTA had grown large enough to halfway accommodate it.

Much of the information we have about anemones is anecdotal. How many of us are actually running controlled studies to corroborate the assertions that we make?

There has been research conducted that indicates that clownfish are instinctively attracted to the "scent" of host species. When in aquariums, clownfish are often hosted by non-natural hosts, eg., a tomato in an LTA. Perhaps this is because an LTA smells at least a little like a BTA, or perhaps the visual cue of tentacles waving also plays some role in the attraction of clowns to anemones. Without research, no one can say with any certainty. However, with research it has been established that host species release a "scent" (I'm assuming the scent is associated with the slime shed of the anemone) and this attracts clownfish. And this is consistent with most all of the anecdotal reports I've read on RC where tank-bred is not the issue, the issue for being hosted is natural vs. non-natural.
 
From Anemone fishes and their host sea anemones by Fautin and Allen:

"Miyagawa found, in aquaria, that newly metamorphosed fry of some species locate an anemone by chemicals that are constantly being released by the anemone, much as a salmon senses its home stream, and that vision plays no role. These chemicals differ among species, so larval fish are attracted to anemones of species with which fish of that species naturally occur, but not to anemones of other species. However, fry of other fish are not attracted to anemones with which they naturally occur. So clownfishes may differ in how they select and locate hosts, as well as how they are protected from them."
 
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