High Tide Aquatics

Do you feed your BTAs? What do you feed them with?

Vincerama2

Vincerama2

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OK, I've kept RBTAs for a decade and never really fed them. However, immediately after the last frag trade, my RBTAs (but not GBTAs) have started to bleach. I did a bunch of water changes. I don't know if I put something in the tank that they hate, or there is chemical warfare going on in there.

Anyway, I finally removed the surviving RBTA to my holding tank (about 75 gallons in a 100g tank, with some fish, live rock and some zoos under dual 150W MH lights and skimmer) in case it was warfare. They look bad. One is tiny and probably won't make it. One is still reasonably sized, one is small. I don't know if they shrunk or are just splits. I've lost a few in the tank.

So, since they are bleached, I'm thinking that I need to supplement them with food.

I recall on this forum, some people said that feeding anemones is counter-productive as it requires a lot of energy for them to digest stuff and that photosynthesis and xoozanthelae is all they need.

But since they seem to have dumped the xoos, I think I need to help them out.

I have some silversides in the freezer that I bought, Lord knows when. I have some goo paste in little packets (unknown age). I'm sure the frozen silversides are probably frostbitten by now, not sure if that even matters, I have assorted freeze dried stuff (krill) and I do not have any unexpired vitamin stuff to soak this stuff in.

Would feeding them help? I might try either the krill or the silversides. Or do you think it will harm them because they are not used to it and it will take energy from them.

I find it hard to believe that eating wastes energy, unless they're eating celery.
 
All I know is that people have recommended not feeding silversides because there are no controls on how they are processed or what's in them.

I mean seriously, on RC's anemone subforum, there are some die hard folks who hate the mention of people feeding silversides.

I have never had luck on bringing an RBTA back from near-death.
 
OK, I'll try and stick with the freeze dried krill.

It will be an end of an era if these RBTAs die, I've sold and given away dozens of them so the "line" will be preserved, but it's pretty sad.

The GBTA (or Brown BTAs) are still doing well in the tank though, which puzzles me. And like I said, all was fine and dandy until I brought home the new frags from the trade. I'm guessing some sort of warfare.
 
If water parameters haven't changed it sounds like chemical warfare. Try thinly sliced salmon to feed your nem. You might want to attend Novembers' BAR meeting featuring Shu Tin Sterling, she will be talking about anemone care.
 
Feed small microfauna (probably using the wrong terms) like mysis shrimp, arctipods, etc. Don't do larger items, yeah they can and will shove it into their mouth, put they really do prefer lots of tiny things to capture.
 
Vince,

i've always fed all my BTAs that iv'e had Freeze dried Krill.. they love em. You can probably soak it with vitamins if you want prior to feeding. But I never had issues with Krill. Large ones about .75" to 1" big.

I have a couple of brand new cans I can sell you that I got from Chris before he closed his shop.
 
have a bottle of freeze dried krill. I soaked them in water to make them less boyant and the GBTAs seem to eat them up fine. The RBTA, I moved into a basically FOWLR holding tank and pushed one at it, which is may have eaten, but it's in hiding right now, acclimating itself to the different lights so it's hard to feed. I don't want to over feed it either.

Artipods and mysid sound good too, I'll try those as well.

V
 
Hmm, didn't know there were problems with silversides... good to know. That's what I always fed them in the past, but haven't bought them in a while, they seem to pick up enough chunky stuff from rod's food. Up to six of those guys now, might have to do something about that soon!
 
I read a claim that for anemones that overfeeding can be a problem and this particularly applies to silversides which are a large meal and hard to an anemone to digest. The basis of the claim was that anemones only need "food" for nutrients that they can't get from photosynthesis. As such they don't need very much and only very small meals. Digesting "food" can be taxing for an anemone--a net energy loss and overfeeding can weaken an anemone which is having trouble generating enough energy from photosynthesis.

FWIW
 
I have a Cody, rbta and a gbta. My green one turned brown and i read every where I could to find out what was wrong. I read that them turning brown is good. I didn't buy a brown one I wanted green. Check with a great LFS and they said to go to the Asian market and buy the little balls of scallops. Cut them into fours and feed him .. about a month later the green one is fuller and back to his normal color. So i feed all my anemones some once a week. My rbta has split 4 times and they are full and lots of bubble tips.

Sent from my LG-V909 using Tapatalk 2
 
Vince: I gt my rbta from you. When i have time, i usually feed it with mysis. the krill sometime can be a hit or miss. With mysis, if the rbta spits it out, at least the fish can eat it.

I heard some people having success with feeding bits of scallop & shrimp
 
I'll try some scallop bits or shrimp bits too then.

Not much recovery yet. I have 2 left, and one is desperately in trouble. I am trying to feed with freeze dried krill. Oddly, the GBTAs (or more correctly, the brown btas LOL) are thriving. I put one of them in a FOWLR holding tank I'm using. Both are under MH lights.

I'm not sure how BTAs can recover their xoozanthellae, I'm sure the main tank has craploads of that ... in the form of aiptasia hosts.

But they are still hanging on. I have NO IDEA what triggered this. All I did was take a few out for trades at the last swap meet, then they started going south, but only the rose ones! Something triggered chemical warfare I'm guessing.
 
Make sure you have a skimmer running in the tank that is holding the rbtas. Usually it will skim out some crazy stuff when anemones are not doing good.
 
I've always fed my RBTA silver sides never had a problem, "clams on a half shell" from Hikari never had a problem, sometimes I'll squirt some frozen mysis shrimp or brine shrimp. No complaints....
 
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