Cannot keep a BTA alive!

[Lost in the Sauce]

Your argument is against a figment of your imagination.

Now THAT, is a strong possibility!

 

[Floyd-]

Because the OP still will not tell us how much he feeds - so we have no idea how much food these things are getting when he feeds his fish.

I did mention it in post #9 but not really in depth.
I feed a single cube of custom frozen food made by a local reefer. These are big cubes and fill the tank with food when I thaw and dump into the tank. The fish eat and the corals are covered in loose food floating around.

 

[exnisstech]

Another nem success story here with them never being fed. But it could be a figment of my imagination

 

[92Miata]

I did mention it in post #9 but not really in depth.
I feed a single cube of custom frozen food made by a local reefer. These are big cubes and fill the tank with food when I thaw and dump into the tank. The fish eat and the corals are covered in loose food floating around.

"single big cube" doesn't really tell us anything though - how many grams? How many "normal" cubes is it equivalent to?

There's a wide gamut of what people feed in reef tanks - and a wide gamut of how much ability their tanks have to process and remove nutrients. I feed 5-6 cubes a day in my 50(+20). I have to dose phosphate to keep it measurable. My wife's anemone tank (40 AIO) gets fed way less(cube a day?), and maxes out both my hanna ulr phosphate and HR nitrate.


She could probably not feed and her anemones would do great for a long time. Mine I have to make sure they get particulate food when I feed or they start shrinking.

 

[92Miata]

Another nem success story here with them never being fed. But it could be a figment of my imagination

Do you feed your fish? Then your anemones are getting fed.


The question here isn't "Do they need food" it's "are they getting enough food in the OP's tank"?


The "I don't do X, therefore nobody needs to do X" stuff is just incredibly obtuse. Reef tanks are complicated, and every single one is different.

 

[Floyd-]

"single big cube" doesn't really tell us anything though - how many grams? How many "normal" cubes is it equivalent to?

There's a wide gamut of what people feed in reef tanks - and a wide gamut of how much ability their tanks have to process and remove nutrients. I feed 5-6 cubes a day in my 50(+20). I have to dose phosphate to keep it measurable. My wife's anemone tank (40 AIO) gets fed way less(cube a day?), and maxes out both my hanna ulr phosphate and HR nitrate.


She could probably not feed and her anemones would do great for a long time. Mine I have to make sure they get particulate food when I feed or they start shrinking.

Compared to the tiny cubes that come in the blister packs its maybe about the same as 6-8 of those.
I dont work from home and only hand feed once a day and thats worked great for over a year without issues.

 

[exnisstech]

Do you feed your fish? Then your anemones are getting fed.


The question here isn't "Do they need food" it's "are they getting enough food in the OP's tank"?


The "I don't do X, therefore nobody needs to do X" stuff is just incredibly obtuse. Reef tanks are complicated, and every single one is different.

I also have nems in another tank in the basement where they go when they start moving in my DT . No fish there and these nems thrive and are fed nothing but light and flow

 

[2Sunny]

Besides the multiple other BTAs? You can't extrapolate from "These conditions are fine for this acro" to "These conditions are fine for this anemone" - they come from different environments and have different needs.

They can only get sugar (carbon) from the light. They need nitrogen and phosphorus and a ton of other things. If you don't have high enough levels of these things in the water column, they will need to be fed.


Whoever is telling you that anemones don't need food - just cross them off of your list of people to listen to about reef organisms. Anemones are all heavy feeders. You may or may not need to spot feed, but they all need to be fed.

Kept anemones for over 2 decades including BTA, H. Mags, and Haddoni. On a rare occasion I have fed one or more for fun and when I was briefly thinking a new anemone was looking pale and might benefit from direct feeding, but otherwise I NEVER feed any of my 'nems. Got 5 right now. How much food do you think a 'nem gets in the wild sitting still? I hate it when people here make blanket statements with no facts. Just because you have had success with one technique of owning an anemone does not make you an expert. Like I said I've had anemones for decades and I still learn new things every month.

As to the O.P. the fact that you lose the anemones over a period of time hints to me that your water parameters are off. In what way is impossible to tell without being on hand. Swings in alkalinity, salinity, pH or other common bugaboos of small tanks could easily kill an anemone slowly as could high nitrates. My OPINION is that a stable and healthy environment is key to success with anemones. Personally I look for a healthy population of pods and sponge life as a good indication of such an environment.

P.S. Here are a few photos of my tanks and 'nems over the years. The pale little guy in the first photo turned into the monster in the second and third photos:

2001

2004

2011

2017

Today in my Fiji Cube

Yesterday in my main tank:

 

[Lost in the Sauce]

Compared to the tiny cubes that come in the blister packs its maybe about the same as 6-8 of those.

Holy moly...

That's more than I feed my heavily stocked 180.

Anybody Still think it's starving?

 

[92Miata]

Kept anemones for over 2 decades including BTA, H. Mags, and Haddoni. On a rare occasion I have fed one or more for fun and when I was briefly thinking a new anemone was looking pale and might benefit from direct feeding, but otherwise I NEVER feed any of my 'nems. Got 5 right now. How much food do you think a 'nem gets in the wild sitting still? I hate it when people here make blanket statements with no facts. Just because you have had success with one technique of owning an anemone does not make you an expert.

Do you feed your fish? Then you feed your anemones.

And I've been in the hobby a whole lot longer than you have, and kept thousands of these things. I've had single tanks that had hundreds - because they do really really well when you feed them. Crap, I was paying for the hobby selling the things in the early 90s.



The only blanked statement I have made is that anemones need nitrogen, and phosphorus. This is fact.

Beyond that, every tank is different, and the animals needs can be met in many different ways. The fact that you have done well without target feeding does not mean that every tank will get by without target feeding.


If you dislike blanket statements so much, stop making them.


Now, can we get back to figuring out what the OP is having trouble with, rather than you guys waving your e-peens around about how you don't need to feed your animals?

. Swings in alkalinity, salinity, pH or other common bugaboos of small tanks could easily kill an anemone slowly as could high nitrates.

Anemones don't give a crap about alkalinity, he doesn't have a small tank, and he doesn't have high nitrates. Stop arguing and READ HIS POSTS.

 

[Floyd-]

Holy moly...

That's more than I feed my heavily stocked 180.

Anybody Still think it's starving?

Agreed. People always comment about me feeding one cube of frozen a day but honestly its a lot and my fish are fat and happy and all the other corals are happy but nems I cannot keep happy and im unsure why.

The only only parameter that has been out of whack recently was salinity. My Hanna checker that I was using was reading 35ppt but the tank was actually at 38ppt! I dropped that over a week and things are stable again.

 

[Lost in the Sauce]

Agreed. People always comment about me feeding one cube of frozen a day but honestly its a lot and my fish are fat and happy and all the other corals are happy but nems I cannot keep happy and im unsure why.

The only only parameter that has been out of whack recently was salinity. My Hanna checker that I was using was reading 35ppt but the tank was actually at 38ppt! I dropped that over a week and things are stable again.

Stability is Way more important to your entire reef, than specific numbers.

For how long has this system been running?

 

[2Sunny]

Do you feed your fish? Then you feed your anemones.

And I've been in the hobby a whole lot longer than you have, and kept thousands of these things. I've had single tanks that had hundreds - because they do really really well when you feed them. Crap, I was paying for the hobby selling the things in the early 90s.



The only blanked statement I have made is that anemones need nitrogen, and phosphorus. This is fact.

Beyond that, every tank is different, and the animals needs can be met in many different ways. The fact that you have done well without target feeding does not mean that every tank will get by without target feeding.


If you dislike blanket statements so much, stop making them.


Now, can we get back to figuring out what the OP is having trouble with, rather than you guys waving your e-peens around about how you don't need to feed your animals?



Anemones don't give a crap about alkalinity, he doesn't have a small tank, and he doesn't have high nitrates. Stop arguing and READ HIS POSTS.

First off you clearly have a reading problem as I spoke directly to the OP offering my OPINION on what could be causing trouble. Now if you have some scientific proof that alkalinity doesn't matter to an anemone then I'm all ears. My experience would indicate otherwise as is my experience with excessively high nitrates and salinity swings, but I fully admit those potential problems are my OPINION and not based on any science that I have looked at yet.

I don't give a flying you know what how long or how many anemones you've kept. You are the one who made a blanket statement that anemones need to be fed and THAT is simply not true and now you've changed the story to anemones might get enough ancillary food from that which doesn't go to the fish. That's not feeding directly, and for the record I barely feed my nano so no way in heck those guys are getting fed from fish food not eaten. Show me a scientific paper on food requirements of an anemone then maybe I'll consider your thoughts.

Your advice was a) feed your anemones and b) don't listen to anyone that doesn't. Both pieces of advice are terrible in my eyes. My advice is focus on creating a healthy and stable environment. Now the OP can examine his own tank and decide if his reef is stable and healthy and if it is THEN we can consider another factor.

 

[Floyd-]

Stability is Way more important to your entire reef, than specific numbers.

For how long has this system been running?

This tank is 175 gallons and going on more than a year being setup.

 

[Lost in the Sauce]

This tank is 175 gallons and going on more than a year being setup.

Do you have any pictures of the nems that were failing?

Were they just folding up into themselves and looking like a Hershey kiss, blowing their mouths open and spitting guts? What kind of demise are we talking about here?

 

[Floyd-]

Do you have any pictures of the nems that were failing?

Were they just folding up into themselves and looking like a Hershey kiss, blowing their mouths open and spitting guts? What kind of demise are we talking about here?

I can snap a picture tonight of the two in there at the moment. One was completely closed and the other slightly opened yesterday when I was looking. They both moved to the top of the rocks on their own. Thats why I asked about PAR levels. I thought they might need more light is all.

 

[ggNoRe]

Couple things I've noticed about keeping nems. 1. They hate flow so you might want to try a low flow area especially when they are settling in. 2. They really like stable salinity. So you might want to make sure that however you are testing salinity is working properly and that you have an ATO or another method to keep your system from having any big salinity swings. Personally after using a refractometer and a swing arm I now only trust the Tropic Marin high precision hydrometer.

Also I do have a PAR meter and have kept the nems in 2 different systems. One with about 300 PAR and one with 150 PAR. There are a lot of variables so it definitely could be more than just lighting but they were happier in the system with 300 PAR.

 

[Floyd-]

Couple things I've noticed about keeping nems. 1. They hate flow so you might want to try a low flow area especially when they are settling in.

Well thats a good idea! I have tons of flow in this tank. 4 jets in the rear of the tank (stock on the redsea max s-650 tank along with a reefwave 45 and jaebow powerhead. the reefwave set at 65% random flow and the jaebow maxxed out in pulse mode.

 

[Floyd-]

Here is a picture of the two little guys at the moment. Also tossed in a pic of the tank. They are located on the left right above the green leather on the leading edge of the arch. They started off near where the yellow tang is located more towards the center of the tank.

 

[Lost in the Sauce]

Are you actively or passively running carbon in the system?