Question about BTA

Hello all,

I am curious to know a little bit more about Anemones. I have 3 anemones in my tank and when i bought them they resembled the picture below but with age they look more like a long tentacle anemone. Is their certain conditions that are needed for anemones to stay looking bubbly?


Picture copied from New reef sponsor Bluewatertropicals.com.

 

HMMM no responses. Thats unusual.

 

it could have to do with not having enough light. what lights do you have?

 

POS PC 2 - 56 watt 10k 2- actinic. 4 ft coralife

 

my opinion is that this is not enough light and this is why the tentacles are stringy. How long have you had them?

 

couple of years

 

thats a long time to live with low lights on a 4 foot tank like that.

 

BTA's often stretch themselves in the home aquarium and loose their distinctive bubble tip. Its really nothing to worry about.
Did you know, no one actually knows why they bubble at the end? There are theories but that is all they are.

Now with your lighting, i would also consider it not good enough for an anemone, however if you have kept a few for a couple of years with these lights, then the old saying goes, dont fix what isnt broke.

 

When it comes to BTAs, there's ones collected from both shallow and deep water. I would imagine his are deep water specimens, since they're obviously OK with lower light.

 

I have a BTA, which is thriving in my tank. Since the day I put it in, (after I created a crevice for it to live in), the BTA decided it would go completely behind all my living rock, and just show a small part of itself in the crevice. Now it must be happy there, because it wont come out. OK...it's his life, but I'd like to see a little more of it. Never the less, its tentacles are as you say, long and stringy, it waves around in the water movement, and when I feed it, it almost rips my arm off when it snatches its food.

Like Blackraven says, I think they come from shallow and deep water, some like low light. I use T5s, which suit s everything else I have in the tank...just the BTA likes almost dim lighting I guess.