Maroon Clown Digging Holes??

[Billan]

I have a maroon clown with a long tipped anemone in a reef tank. The anemone recently moved to the bottom of the tank on top of my live sand, and attached his foot to the side of my live rock. Since then my maroon clown keeps digging a very large hole all the way around the anemone. The clown is throwing sand all over with his tail. Any ideas why he may be doing this would be a great help.
Also could this disturb my sand bed?

Thanks

 

[pathos]

yes my stupid maroon clown does this too. i really don't like him BTW, but this activity makes it worse. Of course it disturbs the cleansing abilities of your SB, depending on how deep it is, but it also creates an unsightly crater in the middle of your sand. I placed a flat piece of LR with GSP on it in the place where he was digging. That seemed to work. Now if I could only catch the sucker.... HTH

 

[MedicineMan1]

The clown will do that, nothing you can do. Also, the anemone has "chosen" its preferred place and there's not much you can do about that either. As far as the sand bed, yes, it will disturb it locally, but not overall. HTH

 

[wnfaknd]

indeed clowns will make a hole in the sand around the anemone, it will always do that, you might want to take out some sand and dig the hole yourself as to avoid the clown making a mess

 

[EmilyB]

It can and will cause recycling to a certain extent, which is why I recently removed a saddleback from a similar situation.

Some things you might try first are to position some small rocks around the anemone. This will discourage some, but not all....

 

[JennM]

Methinks "he" might be a "she"...I've seen lots of female clowns do this as if preparing a place to lay eggs. My female Tomato (A. frenatus) has been doing this recently (she's about 18 months old, I've had her for about 14 months) I'm hoping for a spawn soon, and a tank I maintain has a HUGE A. melanopus that is several years old, and she regularly fans the sand. I've seen various other clowns, all females that I know of, do this.

I use shallow sand beds, so it's not much of an issue to me.

Jenn

 

[JohnD]

JennM is right on the money, Billian. You have a female. She is just doing what comes naturally!

Just sit back and enjoy her goings on. My female tomato clown does the same thing.