Clowns torturing flower anemone?

[sikemd]

I have a pair of maroon clowns that seem to be torturing my flower anemone. I think they are trying to have it host them but the anemone seems to be hating it and has been staying mostly closed and won't hold on to food when I try to feed it although I may have been feeding (or trying to) it too often as well.

The clowns seem to be periodically picking at the tentacles, from what I've read they are "testing" it.

The anemone isn't very big probably about 3" diameter fully opened. It has been moving a lot, at one point it seemed happy at the top of the tank but eventually ended up on my power head and was getting sucked in and blown around so I took it off and moved him back down to the bottom where he's been roaming in the same area for a few days now but has been staying mostly closed for over a week.

Will the clowns eventually leave it alone? I'm doubting the anemone is ever going to want any part of them. Maybe I should just get them a host anemone to ease the pressure on him? I'd like to have one anyway. Anyone have any suggestions? My LFS has a pretty awesome anem selection. I think I may run there today and see what they have. I know it's always a risk but I'm sure there are species that are more likely to host my clowns and less likely to gobble up the other life in my tank.

 

[Uwharrie]

I had to take my bubble tip out of my tank as my Maroon was beating it up. She has left my carpets and RFA alone thank goodness
My poor BTA still has not recovered

 

[sikemd]

Darn Maroons are mean aren't they? Lol. They bite me whenever I move live rock around in the vicinity of their "home" in the back of the tank. Catches me off guard and scares me every time. I originally had 2 domino damsels in the tank that I had thought were nipping fins of my other fish so I moved them into my sump quite some time ago. I've since seen some nipped fins especially on my yellow tang but not as much as before... I think it may have been my clowns all along. Poor damsels got a huge tank size downgrade possibly for no reason, but it's a nice little setup down there and they don't seem to mind sharing the smaller space. I hope I'm not being too cruel by keeping them in there. I think the damsels may have been stressing out the clowns though and causing them to be more aggressive with the other fish in the tank, possibly why the nipping has been far less than it was before when the damsels were in the tank.

I have a really tiny (dime to quarter sized) BTA at the top of my tank that came with some live rock. BTA's will host clowns won't they? This guy is growing really slow anyway and probably wouldn't even be capable for a long time... pretty cool hitchhiker though wish it would grow faster.