Unusual?? clown behavior during feeding anemone

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

While I've often seen my pink skunk clowns messing around with food that I'm trying to feed to the H. crispa that they live in, I figured they were usually trying to eat some of it (it is often hard to see deep into the tentacles). But last night I noticed something different for the first time.

I was feeding a fairly large sized piece of fresh clam, and that really seemed to upset the clowns. After the anemone had wrapped many tentacles around it, the clowns would take a tentacle into their mouths one at a time, and pull them off of the clam bit, sometimes quite vigorously. Eventually they got them all off and the clam bit floated away.

Is that common? Any accepted reason they do it?

TIA

 

[Flighty]

Clowns are weird that way. Some ignore the food you give an anemone, some try to remove or eat it themselves, and others will carefully feed the anemone. I have one little skunk who never eats until he first brings a piece of food to the anemone. I have heard of clowns who drop snails and rocks onto their anemone and even a few who chase other fish into theirs.

 

[marie]

I once fed my anemone (H. crispa) a cleaner shrimp that had died. My clowns spent 10 min trying to clean house by removing the shrimp from the tentacles while the anemone hung on for dear life.
Finally the female clown gave up pulling and pushed the shrimp staight into the anemones mouth instead :lol:

 

[McRaeGeckos]

My clowns never eat the my anemones food except sometimes when they bring food to it the other will eat it.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

[welcome]

Welcome to Reef Central

And thanks for the input everyone.

 

[tylersdad]

I have a Sabae and 2 clarkii clowns and they do the same thing. I have only had them for a few days so I really dont know the last time the Sabae was fed. The LFS doesn't know either, I live in Japan and they are hard to communicate with. I put a peice of freeze dried krill near the Sabaes mouth and the clowns will come and take it out. Will the Sabae be able to hold the krill against the fish if he is hungary?

 

[Robin764]

My female Tomato Clown ALWAYS tries to pull my nems food away. I don't understand this behavior either. When I feed my nems, I have to keep my hand nearby (I get bit...lol), until he has it safely in it's mouth. On a side note, I've never seen her feed the nems either.

 

[sk8rreefgeek]

Clowns are so strange. When I had my GSM, he would feed the nem, and actually use his fin to push the food in! It was pretty awesome. I have never seen my B&W clown feed her GBTA.

When I stick my hand in to feed the GBTA, the big B&W gets defensive, but she knows I'm feeding the nem, and leaves my hand alone. However I got bit for the first time ever last weekend. I had my hand down there with NO food, and she bit me! haha. the fish were also hungry, so that may be a factor

Also, strange, but I noticed when my nem is sucked up (pooping) the clown will actually "help" the nem by pullin out the poop and spitting it into the current. lol

maybe the clams have a negative effect on the nem? weird

 

[Mike31154]

My Maroons have only removed food from their BTA on rare occasions, seemingly when I've fed too often and the piece is not consumed within the first 10 minutes. But here's another weird experience... I usually feed silversides however, before I could get them at a LFS, I was feeding the BTA bits of thawed out shrimp. A few hours after having fed the shrimp to the BTA, I noticed the clownfish could no longer touch the anemone without getting stung! The BTA basically banished the clowns for about 12 hours after having been fed raw shrimp! The female clown would have sting marks all over her face and could be observed staying very close to the tentacles but recoiling every time she got too close. Figure that one out. Next day all was well and both Maroons were happily hosting in the BTA again. The stings would heal up within a day or two. After a few episodes of this, the clowns grew smarter as well and didn't get marked up quite as much. I've been feeding silversides exclusively for some time now. Perhaps I'll try another piece of shrimp some time to see if this still happens, although I really don't want to subject the clowns to that scenario again for the sake of some variety in the BTA's diet.