• Folks, if you've recently upgraded or renewed your annual club membership but it's still not active, please reach out to the BOD or a moderator. The PayPal system has a slight bug which it doesn't allow it to activate the account on it's own.

Clownfish / Anemone compatability

C

coloniasalt

Whats up y'all!

Just a quick question, I have a pair of picasso clownfish along with possibly looking at buying a stubby clownfish and I was wondering which anemone would be best suited for my clownfish. Any input would help!! Thanks again.
 
R

ReeferNets

Nice pair of clowns, lets see some pictures.

Adding a juvi clownfish is a hit or miss situation. In the wild a large female clown has a harem of small males that live with her in the anemone. In captivity sometimes when you purchase all the clowns at the same time you can pull it off. Most of the times it will result in dule to the death. Not a chance to take with expensive picasso and a ORA stubby reject.

On the side of anemones, the easiest to maintain is a cultivated RBTA (red bubble tip anemone) or a green sebea (yellow or white sebeas are not healthy anemones) or a Long tentacle anemone.

There are harder anemones that ocellaris and percula host but they are much more diffucult to keep and should be handle by someone with alot of expierence.

Lets start off with tank size and tank maturity, filters, lights, and substrate. Those are some factors look at when buying an anemone
 
C

coloniasalt

Tank is about 4 months old, Picasso's I got 2 weeks ago, its a 20 Gallon Nano Reef tank with 20 lbs of live rock w/ live sand , T5 HO Novo Extreme Plus lights.

Corals: Aussie Duncans, Kenya Tree, Frogspawn Octopus Coral, Green Star polyps
Inverts: 3 Snails, 6 Blue legged Hermit Crabs
Fish: 2 Picasso Clownfish and Citron Goby
 
R

ReeferNets

Your setup sounds great for a bubbletip anemone. I'd wait at least another month to put in the anemone. Your tank needs to be mature just one or two months. You could go with a Long tentacle anemone also but they are a little harder to maintain. Before purchasinng your anemone post here with detail on color and type so we can make sure you don't get an unhealtHy one.
 
redfishbluefish

redfishbluefish

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
You should also realize that just because you have an anemone and clowns, doesn’t mean that they will host in the anemone. I have a RBTA and two clowns for about two months. The clowns have never gone near the anemone. My guess is that it is up high in the tank (top 1/3), while they prefer to stay in the bottom 1/3. The two clowns have hosted in the star polyps, the cynarina and pulsing xenia. It’s funny watching the one little clown ram into the branches of the xenia almost looking like it’s stuck. Repeats this over and over. Anyway, to answer your question, I’d go with the RBTA for beauty, readily available, ease of care and cost...and hope the clowns host!
 
C

calaxa

Go with the BTA. That's going to be your best chance with a pair of tank-raised A. perculas (picasso variant). You won't be able to house their natural anemone (carpet - Stichodactyla gigantea) in a nano.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top