Sleeping Clowns - Coma or Dream State?

I have two clowns in my tank, a maroon percula and a smaller 'Nemo' brand clown.

At night, the past couple of nights, I've noticed that the maroon will get sucked into the grill for the intake to the filters and just stay there. The first night, of course, I was horrified because I thought it had died, but thought it was odd that none of the crabs had gone toward him.

When I opened the tank to reach in for him he literally jumped OUT of the water and back and under a rock. I, of course on cue, screamed and lacerated my arm yanking it away... I think we can all recall the fear I have toward my tank...

Anyhow, the past few nights, the clown has been doing this - basically getting up against the grill and utilizing the suction/flow to stay put and not move at all.

Is this normal or has anyone else seen this type of behaviour? I've tried to do some reading on 'fish sleeping' but I can't find really anything useful that provides generic specification beyond species 'sleep patterns' and wondered - do fish actually sleep, and if so, what does that mean?

The ocean, at night, doesn't 'turn off' the currents, etc - so how do fish manage to stay away from or deal with nocturnal predators.

He seems healthy otherwise - eats normal during the day, swims around... and this seems more recent - I'm sure I would have noticed beforehand if he had been doing this.

Ideas? Recommendations?

Sounds like just a normal clown acting weird to me. Clowns will host anything, and I've heard of them hosting powerheads. Sounds like yours has taken a liking to the intake. As long as he/she is healthy, and strong enough to get away from it when needed, I wouldn't worry about it.

Yeah clowns are some strange creatures. Mine hosted my algae for a while which was pretty funny, now they are fond of my xenias.

And the fish sleeping part - do fish, in general, 'sleep' and how can I tell?

Fish don't "sleep" in the way we think of sleep, but they do enter a period of rest. It's relatively easy to look at a "sleeping" fish and see that it's at rest. They act differently and look sort of sluggish. My clowns squeeze between the powerhead and the wall.

kwsm said:

Fish don't "sleep" in the way we think of sleep, but they do enter a period of rest. It's relatively easy to look at a "sleeping" fish and see that it's at rest. They act differently and look sort of sluggish. My clowns squeeze between the powerhead and the wall.

Click to expand...

+1
All fish will go into a sluggish like rest mode after lights out.
I used to have a foxface that would get up against one of Koralia 4s for the night.

Let me see if I have some clown`s sleeping pics

Hehehe...my chromis do that (which how I think one of them, within the first week or so, got sucked and caught in between the baffles only to finally escape and end up in my sump 2-3 weeks later) -- they press themselves against the grill at the top of the baffle and just sort of get suctioned there until they "wake up".