Clown in my hammer coral??

[iseeweed]

Do you think this will harm the coral? I guess the clown thinks it is an anemone?? I am very new at this(about 4 months), and I think I have made every mistake possible so far! Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Dave

 

[ChrisRD]

Hi and :welcome:

This is pretty normal and often causes no problems for the coral. In this case the coral is small in relation to the fish, so all the activity may be a bit much for it, but I think you'll have to wait and see...

HTH

 

[bleedingthought]

Hey Dave, welcome to RDO!

Just wanted to let you know that the coral in the picture is a torch, and not a hammer.

But like Chris said, just keep an eye on it but it should be fine.

 

[iseeweed]

Thanks, I will keep watching the torch(oops), and see what happens! Should I be feeding this coral? I add kent photoplankton every couple of days. I have several other corals in my tank, mostly sps. Everything seems to be doing well.

 

[Anonymous]

I had a pair of clowns that hosted in my baby frogspawn and I tried to move the coral to save it but they harrassed it until the heads fell off and it died. I was not a happy camper.

 

[LeatherFace]

check out my avatar

 

[Anonymous]

That's a great looking torch - my favorite color variation. How much did you pay for it?

I would try to keep the clown away from it if i was you. If you don't have another quarantine tank, you could possibly train the clown to stay away using negative reinforcement. Shoo it away with a something or flash a light at it when it gets close. They hate that.

As far as keeping the torch healthy, my best advice is to keep up on your water changes. About 20% per week should be enough so that you don't have to worry about Ca and Alk. What kind of lighting do you have?

 

[WRASSER]

I have even seen clowns host leathers too.
8)

 

[azrednex]

isn't that coral a frogspawn? I have a torch and the "tentacles" are much skinnier ,that one looks more like my frogspawn.

 

[SnowManSnow]

torch coral (at least from the pic)

I dont think the clown will harm it. As far as feeding it.. ive had one for 3 years now and never fed it directly much of anything.

B.

 

[Anonymous]

double dipping sorry.

 

[Anonymous]

I agree it is a torch. I do not feed mine anything either. They may catch a piece of floating food once in a while that is for the fish, but I don't target them at all. I would move the coral though. Usually higher in the tank persuaded my clowns to leave it be, but once I relocated it without giving them a proper host, they went right back to it and killed it. Now that I have a RBTA they leave all my corals alone. Before that, nothing was safe. Galaxia, zoas, hammer, fragspawn etc etc.

 

[iseeweed]

Thanks everyone for the great advice! Salt-creep, I paid $35 for the coral at exotic-aquatics www.exoticaquatics.com. The store is close to Baltimore Md. I am using a 250w metal-halide pendant(9 hours) and a 15w actinic(17 hours) in a 42 gallon system. Here is a pic of my equipt. but it is an old pic from a couple of months ago. There is more stuff in it now.