Strange behavior in Maroons

jonthefb

jonthefb

Active Member
Recently i have observed my mated pair of maroon clowns participating in some strange behavior. They have a bubble tipped anemone that is doing fine, and is located near the bottom of my tank, and as they are constatnly in the thing, on occasion, they back up over my live sand bed, and begin to fan the sand around with their tail. Tehy create large gaps in my sand bed, and thinking that this is bot good for the established colonies of bacteria, i moved the anemone to the top of my tank and after he settled down the clowns followed, but continued to do their dirty digging. Has anyone else seen this behavior in maroons? I cant find any info about this in any books, or literature. Someone help! Im afraid that if they keep this up i might have to remove them! :confused: Thanks again
Jon
 
neutronics

neutronics

Member
Mine fanning the sand all the time but I have no problem with that behaviour. Just cover up the hole once in a while after that yourself :)
 
jakob4001

jakob4001

Member
well, once our maroon bonded w/ the ritteri anemone (also at bottom of tank but heavily affixed to lrg LR), it quickly took to staking out its turf & ANYTHING around it; including the sand; not only that, it is only more than too happy to scoop some in it's mouth & eject it toward front glass at you;however, it will only disturb that one area
 
shel

shel

Member
i would not worry, mine have been doing it for the past year. They have a anemone, the female does it almost daily, the male does it too, just not as much. She also scoops up the sand and spits it out, picks up little hermit crabs and moves them out of her area. It is so funny, I would not get rid of them for anything.
Shel
 
bobothewizard

bobothewizard

Member
There actually looking for food. If you notice they dig for a bit then turn around really quick to see what they dug up..
 
oceanbreez

oceanbreez

Member
Originally Posted by Shel
i would not worry, mine have been doing it for the past year. They have a anemone, the female does it almost daily, the male does it too, just not as much. She also scoops up the sand and spits it out, picks up little hermit crabs and moves them out of her area. It is so funny, I would not get rid of them for anything.
Shel
Do you have more than one mauroon clown? I just have one and he does that too.
He's quite entertaining. He picks up the saltwater gravel I have a spits it out.
Luckily he's not touched the snails yet but he does move one of the lighter
rocks around. He is territorial I think. He also changes colors in his stripes
from to blue. Does yours? He's one of my original fish that I was able
to save when I going through all my tragic losing of fish due to bad equipment.
(not my fault). Good learning lesson though do your own research even
if someone is helping who should know what he's doing. It's too late now
to put another clown in with him right?
 
morales67

morales67

Member
Originally Posted by OceanBreez
Do you have more than one mauroon clown? I just have one and he does that too.
He's quite entertaining. He picks up the saltwater gravel I have a spits it out.
Luckily he's not touched the snails yet but he does move one of the lighter
rocks around. He is territorial I think. He also changes colors in his stripes
from to blue. Does yours? He's one of my original fish that I was able
to save when I going through all my tragic losing of fish due to bad equipment.
(not my fault). Good learning lesson though do your own research even
if someone is helping who should know what he's doing. It's too late now
to put another clown in with him right?
this is so old!
 
anthropo

anthropo

Member
Originally Posted by jonthefb
Recently i have observed my mated pair of maroon clowns participating in some strange behavior. They have a bubble tipped anemone that is doing fine, and is located near the bottom of my tank, and as they are constatnly in the thing, on occasion, they back up over my live sand bed, and begin to fan the sand around with their tail. Tehy create large gaps in my sand bed, and thinking that this is bot good for the established colonies of bacteria, i moved the anemone to the top of my tank and after he settled down the clowns followed, but continued to do their dirty digging. Has anyone else seen this behavior in maroons? I cant find any info about this in any books, or literature. Someone help! Im afraid that if they keep this up i might have to remove them! :confused: Thanks again
Jon
this is what maroons do to get a nest ready for eggs. if they are by themselves they do it to attract a female if one is "near" or vis versa, but we all know that there won't be unless we decide. maroons need a flat surface to lay there eggs on that is why they fan the sand down to the bottom.
 
mr_bill

mr_bill

Active Member
post date
12-07-2001, 05:05 PM

User Shel's last post was 07-22-2002, so I don't think they are around anymore. You mentioned your maroon clown has stripes that change color?
 
jonny bolt

jonny bolt

Member
My Maroon does that, usually when another fish is around his "fort" and it ticks him off. He stays in the back-left corner of the new tank now, in the old tank the back-right was his "turf". Anyway, he claimed this new area, from top to bottom, and he when any of the other fish hang around too long, he will "fan the sand", or "kick up dust" in order to move them along
 
krazekajin

krazekajin

Active Member
I have two huge barnacle shells that my marron clown loves to play beach ball with. She will pick them up swim up and throw them against the glass.
 
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