Can clownfish kill coral?
 

I have a very beautiful duncan with very long tentacles and it was doing great growing really big, then I put the clownfish (pair) in the tank and the male started to host the duncan. The duncan was not so much upset then but I could see it was not inflated at maximum.

But today the female also decided to host that same duncan and she is kind of rough with it. Today the duncan looks really bad, bearely inflated and with shriveled tentacles. I have this duncan for a year and never saw it like that. It was always inflated a lot each day.

Can they kill it? or will the coral get used to it? Not sure if I should move that coral elsewhere or what?

Here is a video of the male in the duncan...the duncan was still looking ok on that video but not at its best, now half of the heads won't even come out :(

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=3JjzfcUNJHs




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Clowns can love their host a little too hard sometimes. I had a clown that hosted my duncan for a while and it really beat the crap out of it. It looked closed up for a while but then started to open up again like nothing was wrong.

Duncans can do this thing from time to time where they look really ****ed off and stay closed for weeks on end, then open up like nothing was ever wrong. Duncans are funny like that. And they're stupidly hardy... I doubt your clown could kill it unless it's getting to the point where it is doing actual damage to the flesh of the duncan.

I'd give it some time and see what happens... likely your clown is going to get bored of the duncan an move on.

I decided that if this goes on much longer I am going to separate the duncan in 2 colonies so that at least I won't lose both. I have this duncan for a year or more and it never looked like that, even on acclimatation on the first day.

I will watch it for a few days and if it get worse I will split it.

Yeah, they can kill it.

yup.....the best relationship for a clownfish is with a nem.....clowns can both kill some corals and be stung themselves by other corals......

damn. I really like that duncan but I can't get a nem as they move and sting coral and I have my tank full of coral, no more room for anything else.

Is there a nem that is relatively safe and will not move too much?

The only other thing I can think of is to put a plastic cage over the duncan to prevent the fish from touching it, at least until they settle on something else.

I've had gold stripe maroons kill many corals by grabbing them with their mouths and tossing them across the tank. They particularly liked killing my frogspawns and branching hammers.:twised:

I've also seen clowns hosting corals both safely and to the detriment of the coral. I have a small clown hosting an open brain right now.

Bubbletips are the safest bet, but it is always a toss of the coin. I have two unrelated RBTAs that are right next to eachother that have never moved once they grabbed on. I have even moved their rock all around the tank and they haven't done anything other than shift a bit. I hope I am not jinxing myself because I have a heck of a lot of coral in the tank that they could annihilate!

ok, I may try a bubbletip. They are quite nice as well but my fear is that it would detach and get stuck in the pump and kill everything. This hapened to one of my friend and she lost a lot of fish.

Nothing is easy in this hobby!

When I get a new anemone, I place it in a rock that has a hole where it can stick its foot and feel safe. I also have my powerheads away from any rock structures so the anemone cannot be sucked in unless its reallllllllly suicidal. Most of the time, these measures work for me and the anemone stays in place.