My clownfish is hosting my rainbow palys!!

I was just about to get my clownfish a new friend this week cuz its been pretty lonely (half the size new friend of course) when i noticed today that is has started hosting my large colony of rainbow palys!!! Needless to say I am not happy I have plenty of other things for it to host i dont understand... originally it hosted my branching hammer until it ended up dying, it moved on to a frogspawn that it hosted for a year until my addition of a niger trigger that lives just below it. They didn't like living so close to each other so the clownfish went homeless for a while bedding in the sand. And now it has picked the home I want it to have the least!! My rainbow palys are not going to want to open up with the clownfish living there and I am afraid they may eventually die... I have been shooing it away with an algae scrapper whenever I see it doing that but there is only so much I can really do... any suggestions? I have a very large new frogspawn that would be the ideal place for it to live.. would adding another clown help the situation and maybe get them both into the large frogspawn?!

 

Coral queen

my experience with clown fish is that once they have decided to host something its very difficult to encourage them to stop or to move elsewhere

suggestion - are the palys moveable or are they glued, puttied to rock?
if they are moveable - you could place them close to where the Trigger lives
which will encourage the clowns to find a new host
if you then locate the spawn close to where the palys where

you might , and I say might
end up with your desired outcome

Steve

 

thats a great idea i will definitely try something like that, but if this doesnt work i may be taking a trip to the lfs!! I have had this clownfish for over two years but sometimes corals outweigh the fish!!!

 

I can relate to that Coral Queen
we have all had our share of fish that for one reason or another outstayed their welcome
coral hosting, bullying new introductions, coral pecking, etc etc
hope the clown gets the message and moves home for you

Steve

 

When my clowns were showing signs of hosting my zoas, I put a small plastic box over the colony. I made sure there were plenty of holes to allow for waterflow and light transmission. It wasn't long after that the clowns jumped into the BTA.

 

another great idea I can try thanks tigermike!!

 

lol i always found if a clown is hosting something you don't want it to. if you can move it change the tank alittle and it throws it off. then it should move else where

 

not my clowns lol i moved my goniporia to 3 diffrent places and my clowns still found it in a matter of a few seconds.

 

haha thats definitely not what I want to happen!! I will be adding a second clown soon so that might also throw it off... i think they will probably want to live in the larger frogspawn hopefully ;D

 

well this is an update: i added the second clown fish and they are now BOTH hosting the rainbow palys... grrrr i cant win but at least i can say they didn't try to kill each other and are now happily paired. they host it only at night also so i suppose it could be worse, they can at least open up during the day and seem to not be bothered too much =)