BTA question

[mharris7]

anemones do have to be fed. Photosynthesis of symbiotic zoox doesn't provide them with all the nutritional requirements they need. I like to feed them Formula 1 flake food as it is a combination of several different nutritional sources and is easy and clean to use (vs. frozen slimey fish parts - which a nice, just messy). If you feed elsewhere in the tank the clown should stay away long enough for the BTA to close on and swallow the food.

Personally I would not try to encourage the anemone to split. If you leave it alone it probably will at some point anyway. Otherwise you just risk injury to the anemone.

[Ram_Puppy]

i used to feed mine shrimp till my heater boiled that tank.

[JeremyGlen]

Your nice clean formula one flake adds lots of phosphates to the water though.

I've always fed my anemones frozen texas 51/60? shrimp from HEB. I just cut it up into small pieces and "help" the anemone catch a few pieces. If your clown grabs one or two its fine since there will be more than that in the anemone. I used to feed my carpet comet goldfish cause it was cool to watch them get eaten. The smaller long-tentacle would eat smaller goldfish occasionally.

[jroescher]

So how big will an anemone get before it splits, if it's not stressed in any way?

[GaryP]

They can get huge. I've seen some that were a couple feet across. Being stressed in some way will also encourage them to split as a means of increasing their chances of survival. My LTA would split 3:1 every time we moved the tank. I was overrun with them at one time because we were moving so often. The really large ones will just clone off small anemones occasionally.

I had a RBTA climb and straddle the grates in an overflow once. It was basically impaled and the only way I could get it off was to split it with a razor blade. I got two nice, small RBTA as a result.

Try checking this out:

http://www.wetwebmedia.com/marine/in...ereprofaqs.htm

[mharris7]

Your nice clean formula one flake adds lots of phosphates to the water though.

I've always run the Tunze phosphate absorbsion product (iron based) in a cannister filter with carbon so I never noticed phosphate problems. I'm still a big fan of the nutritional value. I've had it correct problems with Tangs HLLE as well as being a good food for anemones.