Finally got a clown willing to host my BTA and now this??

My 2 existing clowns could care less about the BTA I put in the tank 10 days ago but I picked up a tiny clown this week and within 2 days, he's all ready swimming through it!

Today though, I noticed him suckling?? a tentacle! I've never seen this before and hope he doesnt tear it. He had a hold of this one for about 30 second before he let go but Im sure it will be fine. My girlfriend has never seen a clown in an anemone in an aquarium and now we have it in our house

Hey mate, they do that due to the broad-spectrum mucus coating they have from birth that gives them some protection from all anemones.

Now what yours is doing is bonding with this anemone by taking its signature mucus in(eating it) and excreting that through its pores to mimic that anemones mucus exactly, so now the anemone will not know it is there at all!

The new one is bonding partly due to the others that may be a risk to it, as it perceives them, so it’s doing its natural bit.

That’s a good sign of normal acid levels in your tank as well, the clowns can’t do that if acidity is a bit much at any one time, that cancels out the bonding and anemone recognition functions and they rarely get that back once in the tank.

That’s how amphiprions do it, they are not born with all the variations of anemones mucus types that the anemone protects its self from stinging it self.

That’s why some anemones will attack and kill others; each species has its own type of mucus protective coating.

Bubble anemones have a slightly stronger sting then heteractis and so on.

Plus on the anemones tendrils there can be traces of foods and they share with each other and the clown as you know will grab passing foods it doesn’t want it to give to the anemone.

You have a wonderfully natural function playing out in your tank, very cool!!!

Wow, thanks for the info! That is really cool to know what he was doing. It's weird, I had many rbtas for 3-4 years and lots of clowns but never noticed this behavior in that time. Good to know things are healthy in the tank too

It would be a little rare if you see it done again, they don’t need to do that much ever again once they start making the exact same mucus them selves.

It would be great to find evidence as to when the first damsel took on this symbiotic relation ship and became the first amphiprion, which would be cool.

It’s a bad future for amphiprions closer to the equator though, the rising CO2 levels in the waters up there due to lower levels of phytoplankton from global warming means the juveniles are not able to find their host anemones, another wonderful result from our global warming