Help! My clown attacks and it hurts.

[Passport]

I have a long tenacled anenome with a Clarkii clownish. When feeding either one the fish attacks violently and actually scares me. How to feed without causing so much disruption is what I would like to know. Any advice?

[Carlos]

Welcome to the world of keeping clowns.

Believe me, there are some people that at certain times of the day, would not dare put their hands in their tank! (myself included)

I have a mated pair of tomato clowns of which the female is as sweet as she can get but during night time, man, she is as mean as she can get!!!!

I would just stay away from them. If you have to feed them, you can just add the food at the other side of the tank and let the clowns come over and eat.

HTH,

Carlos

[vzapata]

I reverted to using a baster to feeding anemones and fish. This seems to work well for me!

[Jared Cooper]

I have a clarkii that bites and barks at me, really it barks, I guess maybe more like a click. I feed my anmone with a bamboo scewer.

[Linda]

I'm fairly new to SW fish. Only had them for about 6 mos. I don't get how the fish are biting. Do they jump out of the water? We always sprinkle our food on top of the water. Our perculas are so cute I can't imagine them biting. Should I be afraid to put my hand in the tank for cleaning etc.?

[Carlos]

Linda,

Usually you see this type of behavior in the larger clowns and specially Tomato and Maroon clowns as they are the most agressive of all clowns.

What they do is virtually dart at your hand and actually nip you with their mouth and they do have very small teeth. They do not jump out of the water or anything.

I have not seen this behavior in percula clowns. They are very peaceful so I would not worry about it.

Carlos

[chromis]

My ocellaris clown in my 10 gallon system is a b*tch! She will bite the crap out of my fingers when I am adding plants or cleaning the glass. My tank raised perculas seem to be rather skittish, although I have only had them a couple days. I had no problems w/ my clown until the chromis in the tank with her died. Now I have to net her to work in the tank. I am hoping to hand feed my percs but we'll see if they get as mean as my ocellaris.;)

HTH
Andrew