Maroon Feeding BTA's

[Richard]

Thought this was pretty cool...I have a pudding wife wrasse that has been dropping weight lately so I brought home some whole krill to try and fatten her up, so as I dropped pieces in my tank my maroon clown would grab a piece and take it to my BTA. Even cooler was that I have 3 BTA's and my clown would take turns feeding each one. My clown has never done this before with any smaller types of food like mysis, brine etc. and even with the krill she would eat the smaller pieces herself and only take the larger ones to the BTA's. Well just thought I would share this.

Richard

[witecap4u]

Yeah,

Thats pretty cool, mine does it with flakes too, although, the other day, I fed the anemone some ground up fresh seafood, and the clown was stealing it from him, so I guess the clown is just going to do whatever he wants...hehe

[Richard]

Tell your wife that I sold the pair the very next morning - although I still held them for another week or two while the customers tank finished cycling. They are now living happily in a dentists office with a new BTA.

Richard

[Isis]

My clarkiis used to do the same for my carpet. Everytime I put pieces of meat into the tank, the clown would always grab some for the anemone. Sometimes the female would continually feed teh anemone even after it had stopped pulling it into its mouth. She refused to let any of the food go to waste. She was such a good mommy!!

[z28pwr]

Hrmm.

From what I've read and personally experienced they are not trying to feed the BTA it just so happens that the piece is too big for them to eat therefore they retract back to their "home" to eat it in pieces without thinking that their home can eat.

When I feed large pieces of food to my clowns they grab it and run back to their homes for further munching. Their homes are just some holes in the Live Rock so I'm sure they aren't trying to feed it ;).

You can read some more on reefcentral under the Clowns and Anemone section and on some published books.


I know reality is a killer :( .

I too thought they were being nice and feeding the anemone.

[Richard]

I've been wanting to argue about this one - symbiotic relationships, animal intelligence and all that but it's been a long day and I'm going to bed so...if it's in some books and on reef central it must be true.