Do you ever feed your anemone live food

[digital-audiophile]

Anyone feed their anemone feeder fish? Or is this faux pas?

[DanG]

I don't feed mine at all. They'll catch some of the food that floats by and sometimes the clown will feed the anemone, but I don't feed any of my BTA's directly.

[Delphinus]

I don't know about "faux pas." I've heard of people doing it.

I've heard, but can't really confirm or deny, that feeding feeder type fish isn't very good because the nutritional breakdown may not be ideal for the anemone. Sometimes people talk about a "food from freshwater source can't be right for a saltwater animal" ... and .. I don't know about that per se .. I mean, P.E. Mysis is fished out of Lake Okanagan and it's one of most ideal foods out there period, for both FW or SW. So I don't think FW vs SW holds a whole lot of merit, but there may be something to the argument about fatty content, protein content, carbohydrates, etc. etc. that may indeed still render a feeder fish as a less-than-ideal food source for anemones.

Personally though, I think it is not necessary to feed live foods to anemones. Most anemones, at least of the Indo-Pacific hosting species, are not, .. what I think you would call "obligate predators". Even the most aggressive feeder of the hosting anemones, S. haddoni, to me is more of an opportunistic scavenger. They will eat critters that blunder into them, but they do not need live food to subsist.

In fact, the most ideal food for anemones, in my opinion, is the PE mysis. The nutritional breakdown is ideal, the particle size is ideal, and it's good enough to be a "sole source" type thing (between lighting and feeding of course).

As for non-hosting species, well, those tend to interest me less so I don't know about them. :) Maybe they do need to be fed, but, I assume we're not really talking about those species anyways. Like the coldwater anemones of our coast, these do not have zooxanthellae and thus are obligate feeders of some kind, however it wouldn't surprise to learn that they too are more scavengers than active predators.

My $0.02 anyhow :)

[digital-audiophile]

I have a BTA and a Sebae that are still pretty small so I just spot feed them mysis daily.

My big BTA though I feed cut up silversides and thought it might be interesting to get some small feeder fish.

[Delphinus]

I used to feed my anemones silversides but I have since stopped feeding that food altogether. Just too many horror stories about people losing anemones that they've had for years and years because of a "bad silverside". It seems as if that if the food can rot or decompose faster than it can be digested by the anemone, you run the risk of a bacterial infection taking down the anemone altogether.

BTA's in particular, are really not very sticky to be effective predators. Feeder fish can probably be eaten easily by the BTA because .. well, they're going to die anyways. But most healthy SW fish are going to evade capture by a BTA for example. They're just not sticky enough.

I noticed though, that some foods do elicit (illicit? Hmm no that's not right :) ) a more vigourous feeding response than others. With BTA's, this was always a shrimp, or shrimp-like food (eg. cut up prawn, or popcorn shrimp, or mysis, or krill .. etc. etc.), over other things like shellfish (oysters, mussels, clams, scallops .. in fact scallops usually got spit up anytime I tried to feed it .. they wouldn't even eat the stuff), and even cut up pieces of fish filet. So that told me that at least these BTA's I was keeping were just not all that "interested" (for lack of a better word) in heavier foods.

Anyhow just some more random ramblings. :)

[marie]

.. in fact scallops usually got spit up anytime I tried to feed it ...

That happens to me too when I eat scallops, although it's usually a bit more violent then just "spit up" :razz:

[andresont]

Some of us are lucky to leave close to ocean.
I pick up some of the tidal zone large pods and feed that soaked in garlic, to my Bubble Tip.
Unfortunately these guys do not survive in aquarium. I think they need to be out of the water for the most part, just like in the wild they are jumping around the beach.
Perhaps some of the Vancouverites will try the same to keep their anemones happier .
I store the local pods in the freezer.

~

[untamed]

[QUOTE=Delphinus;272336]I used to feed my anemones silversides but I have since stopped feeding that food altogether. Just too many horror stories about people losing anemones that they've had for years and years because of a "bad silverside". It seems as if that if the food can rot or decompose faster than it can be digested by the anemone, you run the risk of a bacterial infection taking down the anemone altogether.
QUOTE]

I'll support this statement with first hand experience. I used to feed my carpet anemone silversides. Then, it began to decline steadily. I performed "surgury" on the poor thing to remove large black object, which I assumed to be a lump of fish. The anemome made a quick recovery.

My conclusion was...OK to feed every now and then...but ensure it is only small pieces and not very often.

[danny zubot]

What stood out in my mind about the above statements is that you feed your anemone daily. I used to feed mine once or twice a week at the most and it faired well. With proper lighting an anemone shouldn't require daily feedings, wouldn't you agree?

[Delphinus]

Me? With the exception of my ritteri I don't actually target feed my anemones more than once per week. Anemones for the most part aren't gluttons. Likely they do catch food intended for fish, so they are probably getting more than one realizes anyhow.

My ritteri does get a small amount of mysis every day though. It's just easier that way, this anemone has a high metabolism and does require a lot more food than other species. It's one reason the anemone puts a HUGE load on a tank. I have to feed my CBB mysis daily (only food he eats besides live oysters or live clams or whatever I can find at T&T for him, so I always have some mysis going anyhow).

[digital-audiophile]

There is a lot of conflicting information on the web though, some suggesting fedding all the way from once a day to not required at all.

I feed my two small guys daily becuase there are reeally really small, I am trying to help encourage growth. My big BTA I'll feed maybe every 3-4 days, but I am thinking that maybe I should scrap the silversides.

[Delphinus]

Hey Greg, my suggestion, feed the anemones a generous splop of mysis from a turkey baster say every 2-3 days to encourage growth. If you prefer to level out the growth, cut back to say weekly.

Honestly, I hardly ever feed my BTA's anymore. I try to shoot them a splop of mysis whenever I think of it, but there's no regularity to the routine. I've tried everything from feeding generously every day to not feeding for well over a month, and to be honest I've never really noticed any difference in growth rates. It's like they decide how big they will be. What did vary, is how often they would split. When I fed them super generously, I got more splits in a year. When I fed them less, I got fewer splits.

[digital-audiophile]

I will cut back on the mysis and see what happenes.