Anemone Is starving!

seanothon

seanothon

Member
My flower anemone has been refusing to eat krill or anything solid for a couple months now. The only thing it will take is phytoplex when I spray it right onto it. Any idea how to get it eating again?
Also, my long tentacle has moved behind some rock structure and I cannot get to it to feed it. Do you think it will come back around or do I need to get it out of there?
 
hunt

hunt

Active Member
anemones feed off of Zooxanthellae, which is areny photosynthetic organisms tat lives in the anemone and needs light to survive. so you dont need to feed them, but it can help them grow faster. As long as you have strong enough light your anemones will be fine. If you take away the light, the zooxanthellae will die and so will the anemone. What kind of lights do you have?
(and you should almost never move an anemone. They can move where they want to on there own)
 
seanothon

seanothon

Member
I have full spectrum T5 lights. The only reason I wanted to move the anemone is because it was behind a bunch of rocks in the dark and I could see it getting smaller and smaller everyday
 
hunt

hunt

Active Member
ive had this happen with two of my btas, they went behind my LR and they wernt getting a ton of light, so i just turned the rock around so the btas were in a better positon.
I would keep an eye on yhe thing and if it starts looking bad, then i would say try and move it (but be careful not to harm it). But give it time to move on its own first, and if it goes back to normal and doesnt move to where you want it, you should leave it.
 
btldreef

btldreef

Moderator
You should never force an anemone to eat. You should also push the food through the water column in a direction in which it will flow through the tentacles. By doing this, the anemone can decide whether or not to eat without being force fed.
90% of the time, it's not a good idea to move an anemone. They will move where they want. If it feels that it isn't receiving enough food/light, it will/should move on it's own, just give it time. If it's in a low lighting area and you're feeding it, it will be less likely to move, but ultimately it will perish, they need light to survive.
If your dead set on feeding your anemones, try something else, and smaller. Krill is harder to digest, you might want to try brine, mysis, cyclopeez or reef plankton.
 
btldreef

btldreef

Moderator
Originally Posted by Hunt
http:///forum/post/3292348
i feed my small btas a small chunck of silver side once every one or two weeks
This is fine, but never try to force it. If you have fish, chances are, it catches some fish food during feedings and is eating. Trying to jam food onto the tentacles is not a good idea at all though.
Be careful how big of a chunk of food you feed an anemone, if they get used to a certain size and you have fish of that size, your fish can end up as dinner.
 
S

smartorl

Guest
How old is your tank and how large?
My first thoughts, when anemones hide to the point of starving themselves from light, there is a bigger problem with the tank. It isn't uncommon for them to hide and come back out, in essense roaming the tank until they find an acceptible place to call home.
But if it's been there a while and continues to dwindle, I would stongly suspect there is a bigger problem going on.
 
seanothon

seanothon

Member
Thanks is 90gl and around 2 years old. I checked the levels and the nitrates are high and the salinity is low so I am in the process of correcting that.
 
seanothon

seanothon

Member
Interesting development. I noticed that when i come in to turn the lights on in the morning, the flower has its tentacles protruding much farther. So, I tried feeding it with the lights off and it is readily taking food! Once I turn the lights on it stretches out (I suppose in order to take in as much light as possible) and won't take food. It almost back to normal size, though, and it's color has improved.
 
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