Hey all.... i have a torch at the moment... and they seem to like it quite a bit, but it doesnt seem to like them... it is half the size that it used to be... and this has happened in only a few days! can anyone point me in the direction of a coral that they will love and host, and it will let them host in..... the LFS have a lovely red bushy kind of coral but i havent a clue what it is! but they love it!
thanks

D

the torch coral will get used to it and open a little bigger later on.

ok, but i want to get another coral anyway, what would you suggest?

My clowns love my frogspawn.

BTA, or elegance.

cool, i'll have a peak at frogspawn at some point... will it be ok in a tank with the torch, its only a 12g tank...

BTA will soon take over a 12g with sufficient lighting, or die without sufficient lighting.

i recommend a frogspawn as well. My clowns love it ! (and keep going back for more even tho they are get stung)

GSP. My clown hosted in it enthusiastically and it is easy to keep and very cheap.

My tank is chuck full of everything from LPS, SPS, softies, zoas, polys, mushrooms, rics, you name it and my two clown wont host anything! party poopers

From what I've heard, about the time you buy something for the clown to host, he'll end up hosting a piece of equipment.

I'm
definately not getting a BTA but would a frogspawn be ok
in my tank with a torch?

Thanks for all the replies

D

Torch / Frog / Hammer / Open Brain / Hairy Shroom ....have or had them all at some point.

Know what my clowns like? ...the friggin Mag Float....no bs.

Go figure.

my clowns loved my vortech. until i turned it up a little XD

I guess I got lucky with my clowns. They have used just about everything as their host. Brain coral, a large toadstool, long yellow polyps (you can see them in the background of my avatar), a large colony of candy canes. But the best is the duncans. They swim in and out of it and lay in it. Plus it's a great alternative to having an anemone.

ok thanks you lot, for the replies... i shall go to my LFS and see what i can get... but will seriously think about frogspawn, i know he has really cool hammers, and i shall look at a duncan.... but... can i seem like an absolute noob and ask what a GSP is?? thanks to all

D

GSP : Green Star Polyp

my clown likes my toad stool and Koralia Nano lol

GSP is green star polyp. If you do decide to get GSP don't put it near the torch it'll sting it. Only thing I found that will contain GSP's dominance.

ah ok! just looked at them on the internet, seem pretty cool... i will talk to th LFS and see what they can do! thanks for all the help!

Dan

My clown loves my pumping xenia. I have a friend that has one hosting in a toastool leather. Both are great corals and easy to keep.

Mine loves yellow polyps, and I have a large duncan colony in there, frogspawn too. He was "dancing" with the frogspawn for a while, but I guess he didnt like the sting, so he moved to the yellows. Its so funny when they really bury themselves in there! Shes also trying to get the onyx clown baby I added to come down, but I dont think he gets it. My picassos in my other tank just hang in the rear corner mostly, I have a torch in there, and they didnt even look at it...boooorrriiinnnggg!

I don't agree with this. Mine remains the same size after their hosting it.

and lol...

I thought my clown was retarded. I also have frogspawn, GSP, hammer. My clown hangs out and protects his magfloat. Strange.

Hairy mushrooms!

my first one liked the corner of the tank in the back, woould never swim away from it until it was feeding time.. then i got some grade A's and they host a huge torch and they actually leave it

A lot of people have had good luck with Sarcophyton toadstool leathers, especially the long-polyp varieties. I used to have a female Clark's who loved her toadstool and snuggled in it just like a anemone. After a brief adjustment period the toadstool "accepted" her and actually grew faster while hosting her...it would retract its polyps if I touched it, but not while the clownfish was in it.

The drawbacks of sarcophytons are that they can grow large and easily overwhelm a small tank (but you can frag them), and they are very toxic to other corals, particularly SPS (but I've had even zoanthids wither when kept in a nano with a sarcophyon). The advantages are that they're very hardy, they seem to adapt to hosting without much trouble, they don't have stony skeletons to cut into them when the clownfishes rub against them (which is why so many LPS corals fare so badly when clowns use them as a host), they get big enough to host a pair of clowns, and many of them even look a little like an anemone.

As you can tell, I'm a big fan of sarcophytons as anemone substitutes. I'm getting a nice green ORA one for my black ocellaris pair this week.