Maroon clowns

[Mr_Cool]

I picked these up the other day and LOVE them....

The female is a good 4 in., and the male is about 2 1/2 in.

They're eating brine shrimp out of my hand. Well, at least the female is.....she won't let the male get close enough to take any.
(He gets left with the scraps, I guesss!)

I think they're beating up my RBTA, though. Individually, I think they would be fine with it. But, when they both get in there, it's just a bit too much for the anemone. I've tried to re-position it in the tank so as to block off their access to it. Hasn't really worked too well yet, but I'm still trying.

[Texreefer]

Yeah, I'm afraid if the anemone doesn't come out it will be beat to death,, Maroons are notorious for being too aggresive

[caferacermike]

Mr. Cool, my 2 maroon clowns beat up every BTA I added to the tank, and almost immediately at that. I once bought a BTA that was about 14" across hoping it would eat them....lol. It shrank to nothing in about 4 days. I found they would host to a carpet without much harm. I don't recommend this as most will die in captivity, but somehow my heteractis ritteri anemone seemed to thrive under them.

Unfortunately for me, my 2 longest lived fish (one was almost 7") were recently put to rest due to an ozone issue. Best of luck with them.

[Mr_Cool]

Well, I've done my best to keep those clowns out of the RBTA. Tried moving it's rock up higher in the tank and building a retaining wall so to speak to keep them out. They (or at least one of them) just seem to find a way in there.

Then, I built a little cage out of some gutter guard. That seemed to work great at keeping the clowns out. But, the anemone decided to move last night. (Yea! I kept the clowns out, but couldn't keep the anemone in!)

I decided to go back to the retaining wall idea. I think I have a better build this time.

Anyone have any ideas? I'm almost ready to just let them go into the darn thing and see what happens. But, I know they'll kill it. I don't want that to happen. Unfortunately, I don't have another tank to put it in.

[erikharrison]

Seperate it and feed it daily. Hopefully it will grow faster than the clowns.

[Mr_Cool]

Well, the BTA is still hanging in there. I moved it about 4 feet away from where it originally was. (After trying to wall it off, I noticed the clowns where still hanging out by the rocks where the BTA used to be.) I thought that maybe they wouldn't notice it so far away and it would have a chance.

It took them a day and a half, but they did find it. It moved up onto the face of a rock so that the mouth is facing the front of the tank. I think this it a good position for it. The male seems to be in it more often, but ether way, they really can't beat it up too bad.

I've been watching it daily. It seems to have a pretty good hold of the rock w/ it's foot. The mouth protrudes sometimes, but not a whole lot. It has definatley shrunk up and does not want to extend it's tentacles much. But, it has much better color than it did when they were both in there together.

It went though this type of thing when I upgraded tanks and moved everything to the bigger one. So, I'm hoping this is just a phase it's going through and it will bounce back like it did before.