Understand from the get-go, I'm no nem expert. I keep a reef. Reefs and nems are an uneasy combination. But I have been there, and I do know a few things.
1. WHY do 'they' say don't get an nem until the tank is a year old?
One of the primary reasons is the human one: if YOU are new and the TANK is new, that's a tall stack of really scary possibilities regarding water quality and things a new tank can do to destabilize itself. And when water quality goes south, nems get up and walk and cause damage that can cascade into disaster. I would say first, have an ato. Know how to use it. Second: Get your water into stable condition and hold it there for months with happiness in the tank. Third: make your beginner mistakes with salinity, alkalinity, and be sure your rock has spat out all the phosphate it owns, because excessive phosphate, whether loose and showing up in tests, or showing up bound in lots of algae....is not good. Excessive nitrate is not good. Knock it down, way down, to the bottom of the chart. A tiny bit is good; 'some' is less good; and above that is not.
In short---fix your water, and make sure you have got it stable.
2. Second reason: you need to know what sort of clown takes what sort of nem. Just going down and picking out 'what they have' or 'what looks good' is not the way to proceed. Also---some nems grow two feet wide. Some don't. Think about this, and know something about BOTH species, clown and nem, when you pick out the clowns.
3. Third reason; you need to know the life requirements of that particular nem. How much light. What kind of light. How much flow. And you have to have that.
4. Think of a nem as a 'coral' that gets up and walks. Or swims. When it's not happy, it moves---usually creeping fairly fast from one place to another. At worst, it turns loose entirely and circles your tank rapidly stinging anything it bumps into that's alive. You may imagine the devastation possible---especially when it finds a powerhead intake and turns part of itself into anemone chowder, with loose stinging cells going everywhere in your tank. At this point it starts to die, and the decomposition of a nem is incredibly fast, incredibly smelly, and hard to remove fast enough, because it goes to jelly, killing just about everything.
5. if they don't want to move, you should not try to move them: any wound to their foot is serious. They will clamp themselves in the back of your tank, under rocks, too near a power head (shield those things or don't have them and just amp your return pump) or some other place they should not be. Do not, do not, do not prod an anemone to get him to move. You may try rearranging the water currents, but as to movement, let him do it. If you are not up for this sort of problem, study how experts do it before you get one, because it's real common.
6. they put themselves where they want to be, and the clowns can help stabilize them. The best you can do is nudge a kind of depression near a corner where it would be nice for them to be, kind of a nest for their foot where the flow is good. But they may not like it there.
7. if the clowns do mate and breed, they will terrorize the tank. I had two clarkiis that took 50 gallons of a 100 gallon tank and terrorized a 4" blue velvet damsel, a fat black fish shaped like a tuna, notorious for its aggression. The other damsels just ran in fear of everything. Clarkiis have teeth, and will bite your hand and draw blood.
8. if anything ever goes wrong with the tank, the nem will become a problem in the solution.
All this said, finding out that golden domino damsels will do the clown-thing with a magnifica---I'm quite tempted, myself, but I'm not sure I want the whole 100 gallon tank to become a single-species tank; I think I like a little more variety. And I'd have to get a mega-pump that would cost a bundle.
If you are inclined to want a nem-clown set-up, step one is to go over to the clowns/anemone forum daily and read the posts---the how to's and the agony posts. Learn. Best advice I can give you is go over there and go there frequently before you buy anything down that line.
1. WHY do 'they' say don't get an nem until the tank is a year old?
One of the primary reasons is the human one: if YOU are new and the TANK is new, that's a tall stack of really scary possibilities regarding water quality and things a new tank can do to destabilize itself. And when water quality goes south, nems get up and walk and cause damage that can cascade into disaster. I would say first, have an ato. Know how to use it. Second: Get your water into stable condition and hold it there for months with happiness in the tank. Third: make your beginner mistakes with salinity, alkalinity, and be sure your rock has spat out all the phosphate it owns, because excessive phosphate, whether loose and showing up in tests, or showing up bound in lots of algae....is not good. Excessive nitrate is not good. Knock it down, way down, to the bottom of the chart. A tiny bit is good; 'some' is less good; and above that is not.
In short---fix your water, and make sure you have got it stable.
2. Second reason: you need to know what sort of clown takes what sort of nem. Just going down and picking out 'what they have' or 'what looks good' is not the way to proceed. Also---some nems grow two feet wide. Some don't. Think about this, and know something about BOTH species, clown and nem, when you pick out the clowns.
3. Third reason; you need to know the life requirements of that particular nem. How much light. What kind of light. How much flow. And you have to have that.
4. Think of a nem as a 'coral' that gets up and walks. Or swims. When it's not happy, it moves---usually creeping fairly fast from one place to another. At worst, it turns loose entirely and circles your tank rapidly stinging anything it bumps into that's alive. You may imagine the devastation possible---especially when it finds a powerhead intake and turns part of itself into anemone chowder, with loose stinging cells going everywhere in your tank. At this point it starts to die, and the decomposition of a nem is incredibly fast, incredibly smelly, and hard to remove fast enough, because it goes to jelly, killing just about everything.
5. if they don't want to move, you should not try to move them: any wound to their foot is serious. They will clamp themselves in the back of your tank, under rocks, too near a power head (shield those things or don't have them and just amp your return pump) or some other place they should not be. Do not, do not, do not prod an anemone to get him to move. You may try rearranging the water currents, but as to movement, let him do it. If you are not up for this sort of problem, study how experts do it before you get one, because it's real common.
6. they put themselves where they want to be, and the clowns can help stabilize them. The best you can do is nudge a kind of depression near a corner where it would be nice for them to be, kind of a nest for their foot where the flow is good. But they may not like it there.
7. if the clowns do mate and breed, they will terrorize the tank. I had two clarkiis that took 50 gallons of a 100 gallon tank and terrorized a 4" blue velvet damsel, a fat black fish shaped like a tuna, notorious for its aggression. The other damsels just ran in fear of everything. Clarkiis have teeth, and will bite your hand and draw blood.
8. if anything ever goes wrong with the tank, the nem will become a problem in the solution.
All this said, finding out that golden domino damsels will do the clown-thing with a magnifica---I'm quite tempted, myself, but I'm not sure I want the whole 100 gallon tank to become a single-species tank; I think I like a little more variety. And I'd have to get a mega-pump that would cost a bundle.
If you are inclined to want a nem-clown set-up, step one is to go over to the clowns/anemone forum daily and read the posts---the how to's and the agony posts. Learn. Best advice I can give you is go over there and go there frequently before you buy anything down that line.
