BTA food

I use a syringe (with cut-off end) to make sure the fish and shrimp don't get it. I feed maybe 2-3 times a month with silversides/Vibragrow pelleted food. I used to feed more, but am trying to reduce splitting when it grows big (3 times, so far). It's a pain when I have to detach one of the clones and remove it from the tank. Although it has resulted in friends getting BTA's from me.

Maybe it's just not hungry? Maybe it's on a hunger strike? I'm lucky I guess, my anemonefish feed their host for me!

Has to be a problem with the tank conditions, ie...water quality, lighting etc...  What water parameters do you have?  What and how much lighting do you have?  Have you added any supplements to your tank, treatments or medications?  Do you have a lot of current from power heads?

As far as what I feed mine...It gets lots of shrimp, silversides, scallops and squid.  It gets fed about 2 or 3 times a week.  Its grown considerably in the few months I have had it (from about 4 inches to about 7.5-8 inches in 4 months).  The color on my RBTA is still strikingly brillant, in fact there has to be a law against it looking that nice.

Here is my answer which may not be what you expected and is probably longer than wanted, (as usual).

There is this kind of rule of thumb in the hobby that says that every tank is different. Even two tanks side by side, set up exactly the same will grow apart over time. And then, some organisms do well in one apparently healthy tank but have problems when moved to another seemingly healthy tank.

The reason for this difference may be the variety of living organisms in the aquarium and the way they interact with each other. There are so many different types and strains of organisms in our tanks, from the microscopic to the visible and from the docile to the agressive predator. (Protozoa occurs naturally in the aquarium along with the bacteria that it eats! ) It is just natural that a specific situation may be right for one but not right for another.

One key to success is to recognize where an organism is doing poorly and try to change it's environment to suit it's needs. But if that doesn't work, then it's best to remove it to a different and hopefully better environment.

Anemones are unique in their response to a less than desirable environment. They tend to move to find a better home. Unfortunately, they cannot move out of their cage! It is up to us to recognize when they need a new home and help them move out!

The possibilities for change are many and several have already been mentioned:

-Use carbon to remove possible irritating chemicals.
-Change the lighting scheme or photoperiod.
-Change feeding (putting the tank on a fast works more often than most people realize )
-Do more water changes
-Use different water
-Find a coral in the tank that could be conducting chemical warfare (which causes the entire closed system to suffer)
-Change water circulation, up, down, or around
-Look for predators

I'm sure there are more if someone else would like to add to this list of possibilities.

Edited by Mark Peterson

Ok I haven't checked in on this thread since the first response and now I have alot to answer, so here goes.

When I first added the BTA it roamed around alot till it found a spot in the sand it seemed to like. It was about 5" across and quickly expanded to 8-9" with twice a week feedings of mixed seafood bits. I was running an emperor 400 without the bio-wheels at the time. I then bought a sump from Jon (at a great price) removed the emperor and installed the sump with the bioballs still in it. Immediately after cranking it up everything in the tank shrank up and looked "ill". the BTA shrivelled up, discolored, and seemed to be quickly on it's way out. I reasoned that perhaps the bioballs were depleting the oxygen as I've heard they can and replaced them with LR. Slowly it, and everything else, recovered it's color and opened back up, It looks very healthy now but is only 3-4" and won't take any food I offer it. It has a very caring false perc. in it that apparently feeds it well enough to keep it happy, but not enough to make it grow. Kinda sad seeing a 3" clown trying to sleep comfortably in a 2 1/2" anemone (contracts at night).

Beyond the sump not much else has changes in the tank, livestock, coral, or otherwise. I do run a big bag of carbon and phoszorb in the sump and change it regularly. The sump has increased the waterflow in the tank but not so much around the area of the BTA. As for water conditions:

my temp. is - 78

 pH - 8.1

 salinity - 1.024 (I'm lowering that very very slowly)

nitrates - 0

phosphates - 0

Alkalinity - in the good range(my test sucks so thats all I know)

I haven't seen any potential predators in the system nor any physical damage on the anemone or anything else. I have noticed recently a 3-4 deg. temp. drop at night so I've added an additional heater in the sump to compensate, and I switched my refugium over to RDP a month ago and have noticed better expansion in other things, so we'll see if that helps the BTA too.

appreciate all the advice thus far, I would like to see the BTA eat a bit more as I think that's how he got so big in the first place, I intend to try some other foods like silverslides and perhaps other feeding methods.

Long tentacle anenome and Gold stripe maroon.

Edited by ssilcox

Chris, I would really, really relax about the feeding thing. Anamone's more rely on symbiotic zooxanthellae to perform photosynthesis than they do actual food. Good light and water conditions are better than a patty melt! Their metabolisms are extremely slow, so they may take awhile to recover from changes in their environments. Good luck!

 You got it! Listen to the animal! What are your MH's right now? If the anemone was light deprived, they will usually climb in search for brighter digs. A 250w 20k is more than sufficient for me and my anemone. Have fun, and breath!

Careful on that lighting upgrade. Take it slow on increasing the photoperiod because it sounds like the anemone may not benefit immediately from the upgrade.

The amount of changes you are making to that environment give me pause. I'm not surprised that the enemone is cautious to grow. It is waiting to see what else will change and is stressed to "think about it". Heck, I am stressed just thinking about it!

Those big turbos are more for looks than overall usefulness IMO. Give me a mix of small hermits, mexican, astrea and cerith snails and I'm happy.

Edit: Don't take the above comments wrong. The changes you have made all seem to be positive for overall long term tank health, but now that you have told us this, my advice is to stop and hold for at least six months before making any other changes. Let the tank grow on it's own for awhile.
Oh and the salinity is fine. It can change by several tenths in a day and not cause a problem. It does that in the wild when a colder, higher saline upwelling hits the reef during a storm.

Edited by Mark Peterson

Mark, sorry, somehow I'm coming off as a bit of a panicky nut job here! I'm not in any big hurry to jump to changes here, before I do anything I go through great consideration and research, that's what you're seeing here. I have made quite a few changes since startup, but it was no reef system then! It started as a FO and has evolved into a reef sssllllooooowwwwllllyyyy. But I do feel good that the system is doing well now, so I will leave things alone and just watch for a while. I have tried to be very patient with my livestock buying because I new it wouldn't be stable till I'd gotten to a more permanent equipment state. The system is mostly polyps, xenia, and shrooms, all grown out from bits. I do have the BTA and a squamosa, added at 8 months and 9 months respectively, both after most of my changes, and the clam is doing SUPER. So is the BTA really, great looking, just small. I will just be happy with that and let it do what it will do. I think, as you and carl mentioned, it just needs time.

If it's any credit to my patients, I left my 30 gal. running for three months with just LR, caulerpa, one xenia and two blue damsels. Besides testing, I watched till the xenia seemed happy with everything before replacing the damsels with a young lion, and he's just there till I think the system has a healthy enough pod population to support some mated dwarf seahorses, maybe another couple months or so.

I'd love for you to come by anytime if you get the chance just to look my systems over. No other fish geeks have seen them yet, just friends and family who give advice like, "Oooh, those wavy plant things are neat, you should buy more of those", ... as they look at the xenias...