madducks42
Active Member
- Joined
- May 3, 2017
- Messages
- 104
- Reaction score
- 67
I picked up a BTA in August from a local fish store and it looked great up until early October. We’ve made three changes to the tank since we got it. We started running carbon because it seemed like we had some chemical warfare going on and lost some fish and a torch coral. We also started using Red Sea Coral Colors to add some trace elements. And I’ve slowly been increasing the light intensity. Since we started running carbon all the corals have been thriving and the fish are happy. We do a weekly 20% water change and use RODI water. But the BTA still looks terrible. It never has a gaping mouth but it spends most of it’s time looking deflated and it’s color is dull. Some tank info:
Ammonia: 0
Nitrites: 0
Nitrates: 5-10
Calcium: 400
Alkalinity: 9
Magnesium: 1300
Salinity: 1.026
Temp: 78
PH: 8
Tank has been running since March, I know a lot of people say to not add an anemone until the tank is at least a year old but what's done is done. All those numbers are current and they’ve been stable. We manually dosed for a while and then setup a dosing system but we’ve been obsessive about checking the water parameters so there haven’t been any major swings. For lights we have two Hydra 52’s. They start to come on at 10am and go off completely at midnight. The high point of the day is at 3pm at which point they’re at 80% blue/purple and 40% white/UV, I don’t use the green and red spectrums. By 8pm they’re basically off, they run at 20% blue which gradually goes down before completely shutting off at midnight. I've been slowly ramping up to this schedule over the last two months, when we first got the BTA the lights were about 20% less intense.
The BTA is on a rock that sits at the bottom of the tank. Is it possible it’s not getting light? Too much light? It has never moved from that rock so if it’s not happy with the light or flow I don’t get why it doesn't move. We have a condy anemone as well which hangs out on the other side of the tank. It's made some small adjustments to it's position but has doubled in size in the last 6 months. I could move the rock the BTA is on to somewhere else in the tank but I've been trying to leave it alone and not stress it out. I haven't been feeding it directly but it will grab frozen brine shrimp when I feed the fish.
Any suggestions? My current plan is just to continue leaving it alone.
Ammonia: 0
Nitrites: 0
Nitrates: 5-10
Calcium: 400
Alkalinity: 9
Magnesium: 1300
Salinity: 1.026
Temp: 78
PH: 8
Tank has been running since March, I know a lot of people say to not add an anemone until the tank is at least a year old but what's done is done. All those numbers are current and they’ve been stable. We manually dosed for a while and then setup a dosing system but we’ve been obsessive about checking the water parameters so there haven’t been any major swings. For lights we have two Hydra 52’s. They start to come on at 10am and go off completely at midnight. The high point of the day is at 3pm at which point they’re at 80% blue/purple and 40% white/UV, I don’t use the green and red spectrums. By 8pm they’re basically off, they run at 20% blue which gradually goes down before completely shutting off at midnight. I've been slowly ramping up to this schedule over the last two months, when we first got the BTA the lights were about 20% less intense.
The BTA is on a rock that sits at the bottom of the tank. Is it possible it’s not getting light? Too much light? It has never moved from that rock so if it’s not happy with the light or flow I don’t get why it doesn't move. We have a condy anemone as well which hangs out on the other side of the tank. It's made some small adjustments to it's position but has doubled in size in the last 6 months. I could move the rock the BTA is on to somewhere else in the tank but I've been trying to leave it alone and not stress it out. I haven't been feeding it directly but it will grab frozen brine shrimp when I feed the fish.
Any suggestions? My current plan is just to continue leaving it alone.
