Hosting

I had a pair of clown take 6 months to finaly host in a nem once.

 

Give it some time they will.

 

Yeah it's take some time for me sometimes, but I know that there is one tactic that helps; don't feed the fish. Target feed the anemone, and then the fish will move in to steal stuff from it, and they seem to catch on a little faster this way. Sometimes it doesn't make the difference though.
"They've done studies you know, 60% of the time it works, everytime..."- Brian Fantana Channel 4 Evening News

 

In my old tank, my Ocellaris pair never went into my BTA. They don't naturally host to BTAs (I believe carpets are one of their natural hosts) in the wild, so it is possible your BTA will never host your clowns. I've heard of people quarantining the clowns and BTA in a small tank to encourage interaction. I've read of people taping a picture of hosting ocellaris to the tank to try to encourage them as well. If you really want your BTA to host clowns, you are best off getting Tomato, Maroon or Clarkii clowns which naturally reside in BTAs in the wild.

 

I have breeding pairs of Black and White Percs these are in a brown carpet anenome, my breeding pair of true percs are in my rose tip anenome and my Picassos are in my green/brown BTA. They all @ 6 months and them one day they were hosting

 

Clarkies are pretty mean.

 

The picasso is just a morph of the percula (or is it oscellaris, I don't remember). Either way, it is best to keep them paired by species.

 

Usually mixing clowns is a bad idea. I tried it with an ocellaris and maroon and the larger ocellaris swam up and grabbed the maroon by his belly. Probably doable in a 6 foot tank if each clown is on end.
I don't think they are any meaner than a Tomato or Maroon...which isn't saying much I guess now that I think about it. The good thing is, if they are hosting, they won't be running off very far from their anemone, so harassment is localized. /DesktopModules/ActiveForums/themes/_default/emoticons/smile.gif

 

Love this! I think I'm going to go watch that now... /DesktopModules/ActiveForums/themes/_default/emoticons/biggrin.gif

 

Picassos are perculas, Wyoming Whites are ocellaris.

 

I had a single ocellaris with a long tenticle (which is not it's natural host in the wild) for almost a almost a year and the clown never paid any attention to it. I bought another ocellaris so they'd pair up and within a couple months they were both hosting in the anemone. The male started off hosting in the green mushrooms I had and was eventually joined by the female. Then the female started swiming around in the long tenticle and eventually the male joined her.

I read that clowns are never found in the wild without a host anemone. Give it some time and he'll probably figure it out. Although, I think that if I had never bought another clown the female on her own wouldn't have had much of a reason to seek out a host.

 

That's because all the clowns that fail to find a host anemone are selected against (eaten).