Recovery of bleeched BTA

[Delphinus]

Originally Posted by anglfish

the fact that it likes to be underneath an overhang away from the light. Only the very tips get light.

This is actually a very textbook example of BTA behaviour. They don't like their pedal disks out in the open, exposed to current and light. They will seek out a crevasse, cave or overhang to hang out under, and then "reach out" their tentacles out into the current and light. Sometimes they can reach out so much that the pedal disk looks like a garden hose, all stretched out, weaving through the rockwork to get the oral disk and tentacles out into the open.

I wish I could read minds. Don't want to overfeed this poor bugger but also don't want to starve it.

To be honest, I don't think you can really overfeed OR underfeed a BTA, they tend to be more or less bulletproof. In some situations, in depressed light intensities, they may need to be fed to compensate for the lower energy intake from the zooxanthellae (photosynthesis). I've had BTA's for nearly 10 years now and I've gone from basically daily feedings to not having fed them in months (at least, no "directed target feeding" .. they probably catch food intended for the fish, just fine on their own!) and to be honest I wouldn't say they did better in either situation ..

One thing, increased feeding will lead to increased growth rate, and there seems to be a "maximum size" that they will reach before they may start splitting. At least mine have behaved in this manner. If I feed less, they grow less, and split less. If I feed more, they grow faster and split sooner.

Now .. a couple caveats. I said you can't overfeed, and .. to a degree this isn't "really" true. Where there is some risk is if you feed very large meaty chunks of food. If you feed an anemone something that is too large, it may not be able to digest it fully and it may end up spitting out some half-digested, half-decomposing wad of goo several hours later. There is some risk, I think, that they can get food poisoning (in a sense) from this. I've heard stories on RC where people think they may have fed a "bad piece" of silverside or something and the anemone has gotten ill (for lack of a better way to describe it) and in some cases not recovering.

However, small pieces seem to go down just fine. Nowadays I feed mine mysis and just shoot a turkey baster shot at them. They'll take what they want, and anything they don't want just floats off to be eaten by someone else. If you feed this kind of planktonic-sized food particles (I think mysis is the best food out there for anemones) then it's almost impossible to overdo it (the only risk is if you feed too much you add too many nutrients to your system and you get the usual algae problems and so on).

Are there any visible signs where I could recognize if I do overfeed (as I'm planning to increase small feedings to every two days)?

Hard to describe, but, if you watch your anemones closely you'll learn the signals. The only thing I can think of is watch the poop. If it poops out what you feed a few hours later, try throttling back a little. If it doesn't, you can try feeding a little more next time. It's sort of subjective but you'll start to see when it looks good, or doesn't look as good, and you can go from there.

Hope this helps, and sorry it was so long.