How do you get a clown fish to host an anemone?

[Mermaid Gardens]

My rainbow anemone is attached to a single rock, so I could move it, but catching my clowns. . . Now that's another story.

I've been feeding next to my anemones and now have my sail fin, fox face, scarlet skunk shrimp, and one of my clowns eating from my hand, but the clown stays as far from the anemone as possible while still being able to eat.

Hosting pictures seem to scare the clowns more than anything.

Still no luck with the light trick, but I will keep trying. Eventually something is bound to work.

 

[SkyDiv3r17]

With some luck it took mine a year lol.

 

[SynDen]

Ya I had 2 clowns in my tank for over a year and neither showed any interest in the nems. It wasn't until I put in a snowflake clown, that happened to be a bit bigger then my original clowns and basically started a war in my tank, that they finally took to the nems. I tried all the tricks to up till that point but nothing worked. Dont recommend adding a bigger clown to the tank though, it did get my clowns hosting, but created WW III in my tank I ended up having to tear the tank apart to get the snowflake back out of the tank.

 

[Jeremiah]

One of my friends had a single osc clownfish that wouldn't host, he added a much smaller tomato clownfish (mean). The tomato went right to the anemone and hosted...that made the osc curious and was always checking it out, but the tomato would chase him away. After about a month he took the tomato out and the other clown went right into the nem.

Like he said getting the fish out is the hard part and it also starts a war sometimes. In his case no war really happened...just a bit of tension.

edit: not endorsing or discouraging...just sharing

Ya I had 2 clowns in my tank for over a year and neither showed any interest in the nems. It wasn't until I put in a snowflake clown, that happened to be a bit bigger then my original clowns and basically started a war in my tank, that they finally took to the nems. I tried all the tricks to up till that point but nothing worked. Dont recommend adding a bigger clown to the tank though, it did get my clowns hosting, but created WW III in my tank I ended up having to tear the tank apart to get the snowflake back out of the tank.

 

[Mermaid Gardens]

We finally got them to host. It took every trick in the book (thanks for all your suggestions ) including putting them in a small container, lights, feeding over the anemone. . . But the thing that finally worked, was adding a clown who already knew how. We got a Picasso from silver surfer and waaa laa.

 

[SynDen]

Nice!

 

[Diddle822]

Very cool. I've had my black / white clowns in the tank for 3 weeks anemone for like 1.5 and one was curious so I tried to put them all in a small area ... no luck. I did the clear tube trick and got my larger clown but he would not swim into the nem and he started to get super stressed. Thinking about adding another clown (or pair?) That knows about anemones is that a good idea? Do I get 1 or a pair?

 

[Stickhead]

You can quarantine them together. Although give it time, and it will happen. Try to not have to many flowy LPS type corals, or they might take a liking to those first.