Okay, after much hemming and hawing I finally took the plunge. Went to 2 LFS. First store had a great looking goldstripe maroon about 2.5" but a couple of juvenile blue tangs in the same tank had a dusting of ich.
The second store only had one maroon clown for sale (the other two which were both goldstripe maroons, were in the display tank and were NFS). Looked good and it seemed pretty big at the store. So the LFS guy bagged her up for me and I took her home. It took me a little over two hours to acclimate her to my tank - I floated the bag for 30 minutes with the lights out, then used airline tubing to drip water into a small bucket where I released the maroon. After the drip acclimation, I released her into the 29 gallon, and she started to explore the territory. She actually ate some of the flake food that I dropped into the tank to distract my hawkfish. Very promising! But then my hawkfish jetted out of his (?) hiding spot and pecked at her! And so she swam to the top right back corner to hide behind the powerhead! And there she stayed! The maroon is half the size of the hawkfish!!!! Aaaaaghhhhhh!!!!! Mellow Yellow actually took a few more swings at my maroon. And then Mellow Yellow seemed to stop and go into hiding. But then he occasionally comes around, eyes swiveling towards the corner where the maroon is hiding, and doing swim-bys.....Right now my maroon is in one of those breeding nets to keep her away from the hawkfish. I need to go to work early tomorrow and I'm planning on keeping her in the breeding net to keep her safe. I turned off all the powerheads and only the Fluval 104 is now creating any circulation in the tank. Pretty worried, though. I just hope she makes it through the night okay. It's pretty stressful on me thinking about what's going on in there, and I know it's even more stressful on her.
I hope she makes it through the night in good shape....