Clowns hosting!

[BigJay]

At the suggestion of a reef central guy, I posted PICTURES of other clowns hosting in a bubble tipped anenome on my tank. Frankly it sounds silly, but I'm willing to give anything a try.

My wife laughed, asking what I would do to next to get them to spawn. She made fun of me for the rest of the night. Yeah real funny. No dear, I'm not going to run stag films of clownfish spawning to get them in the mood. har har har I married a real comedian.

To my surprise it worked. The clowns are now hosting in the larger RBTA. They spent a day acclimating themselves to the sting before sleeping there. No issues so far, they even hang around in the small green BTA come feeding time.

My question: How can an idea as absurd as this actually work? Would it have happened otherwise, and the pics are a placebo?

Strangely enough the captive bred ORA ocellaris clown "discovered" the nem first and started wagging a bit in the tentacles. The true perc followed in later. You would think that the captive-bred fish would be the last to think about hosting, but that's plain false.

Here's the picture that induced the clowns to host.

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[BigJay]

I'd also like to add:

Think hard before you decide to "induce" your fish to host. On one hand, watching them host is really neat. They continually clean the nem and and lay inside of it. One of them even spit some mysis into it's mouth.
They lay inside at night instead of the old synchronized swimming routine.

On the other hand, the clowns rarely leave the nem except to eat. They used to race eachother across the tank. It was really neat to watch them waggle a whole six feet across, jump into the vortech current and swim back.

It's fascinating to watch, but now that the clowns are "homeowners" they rarely leave except to eat.

 

[Serk]

I hadn't heard of using photos before, but I've read several accounts of the clown-shaped algae clip trick working (And experienced it first hand)

Basically take one of the algae clips that looks like a clown fish, and "swim" it into the anemone... Maybe even tuck it in the rockwork next to the anemone...

 

[F00jin]

Im wanting to get a clown for my green BTA but its only about 2-3 inches wide. I also have a pretty nice sized Frog spawn that im afriad the clown will host in instead of my BTA. Should i wait until my anemone gets larger? If so how large should i wait to ensure my clown hosts in it? Thanks.

 

[BigJay]

@F00jin wrote:

Sometimes clowns will "love" a smaller BTA to death. Larger is always better when it comes to hosting.