Pet Forum / Aquaria / Marine Reef / April 2004

Sometimes they just don't..
My first Ocellaris didn't start pretending the Coral was a Anemone until the
second Ocellaris was put into the Tank, the second one did it right froom
the start.
And now they both share the Coral.......

Cheers
Microbot

x_streamist@yahoo.com (Tom) wrote on 27 Apr 2004 07:0:

In the wild, different species of clowns naturally host only in very specific
species of anemones.  The wild behavior is _not_ any random clown with any
random anemone.

In captivity, it is sometimes observed that some clown species will host with
a wider variety of anemones if they don't have a choice.  Some clowns even
host with anemone-like corals that aren't even anemones at all.

But all that is non-natural behavior.  The more surprising question is why
_would_ a clown go to a non-natural host, not "why wouldn't it".

There aren't that many species of anemones that ever host any clowns.
The common bubble anemone is "Entacmaea quadricolor".  Usually they're green
or brown.  Some rare (much more expensive) morphs can be pink or red, and are
often known as "rose anemones".  It's all the same species.

The common clownfish Percula, and the false Percula (= Ocellaris), do _not_
host in bubble-tip anemones in the wild.  Kind of ironic, given that the
Percula/Ocellaris are the most common clowns in the aquaria trade, and
bubble-tips are the most common anemones in the trade.  But those pairs don't
go together in the wild.

That said, many people have found that Percula/Ocellaris do sometimes host in
bubble-tip anemones in captivity.  But just as many people found that theirs
never did.  I had four Ocellaris (two wild, two captive-raised) and three
different bubble-tips (green, brown, and rose) for about six months, and the
clowns never showed the slightest interest in my anemones.

      -- Don
_______________________________________________________________________________
Don Geddis                      don@geddis.org          http://reef.geddis.org/