ocellaris nibbling euphyllia

[MichelleRay]

For a little over a week now, both my euphyllia coral have been partially to fully retracted. The torch has 2 heads. One of them is about half out usually, and the other is fully pulled in with a couple bare spots on the skeleton starting to show. The hammer is nearly all the way pulled in to the point I thought it was dead for a bit once. My first thought was parasites, so I kept watch over several nights and during the day but I found nothing.

What I did see was my black clown nipping at them both. What I think happened is I fed the coral some coral pellets, the clown stole them from the coral, and now it thinks coral are tasty treats. Or it's looking for more pellets. Either way neither the coral nor I am happy about this development.

Any ideas on how to stop this behaviour now that it's started?

ETA Only thing I can think of so far is printing out a plastic net to glue around the coral to keep the clowns away, but that's not going to look very good and it would shade a bit of the coral. -_- The frag is glued down and there are non-euphyllia coral in the other half of the tank so I can't really move it around.

 

[nautical_nathaniel]

The clown is trying to host the torch, it basically wants the torch to extend it's tentacles out the same way an anemone would. Clowns are notorious for killing torches through their hosting habits, so it might be better for the torch if you got the clownfish something else to host like an anemone.

I got my clowns a cheap frogspawn to host and it seems to be a lot hardier than any of my torches have been in terms of dealing with the hosting habits of clownfish. Since I have gotten rid of my smaller male clownfish the frogspawn has also taken off in growth, my theory is that my female clown is a lot gentler with hosting it and the coral tolerates her better. However, if I had room for an anemone I would definitely get one for my clownfish.

 

[MichelleRay]

Ah I see. I hadn't thought of this possibility but it certainly makes sense! Once I get the rest of my light bulbs in and find a way to cover my intakes I'll have to look into getting an anemone for the clowns evidently.

 

[John3]

My clown ate all of the stingers off my Hollywood stunner chalice. Picked them right off and slurped them down like spaghetti....... as I was told, clowns do some strange things.

 

[MichelleRay]

For the moment I am using a 3d printer to make some 'cages' of sorts to set over the coral and keep the clowns from nipping as much. Hoping maybe they'll get over the nippy thing at some point. Or at least nip something else like the million pounds of algae and macros meant for eating.