Bulb Anemone Hidding??

[divemasterjim]

I got a Bulb Anemone 5 days ago. The first day I had him He found a spot on the side of my rocks, during the night he climbed underneath them and has been hiding there ever since. Doesnt he need light? he is under the rocks in the dark. I have a 60 gallon tank with T-5 lighting, a little over 3 watts per gallon. Is he just settling in and will come out when he is ready?

 

[Fluff]

Yep, it's typical for them to do this. All you can do is wait it out. If you water parameters are good and nothing is stressing it, it will eventually come out on it's own in search of light.

 

[melosu58]

I`ve never had mine stay where I put it. They have a mind of their own

 

[roka64]

I think they go through a "light" acclimation. If your T5s are brighter than the LFS, it might take him a little to get used to the new light. I have never had one, but had read a lot of other's posts. I will be getting one in the near future. Keep us updated....

 

[john0087]

Hey,
I also just got a BTA and he too has been hiding for the past 4 days. I have heard that they do this quite often so just keep monitoring your water params. He is slowly starting to inch is way out into the light, but I got lucky as to where he is hiding cause he is tucked away into a "cave" in my LV that faces the front of the tank, so I can see hem and monitor him easily.

I am so paranoid cause of all the horror stories I have read about how difficult they are to keep.

Good luck.

John

 

[divemasterjim]

I moved the rocks and he is in the open, he seems fine. Hopefully he will move so I can put the rocks back

 

[lando]

It is best just to let them find a spot they are happy with. If you move them, they will move someplace else. Give it time, it will find a spot it is happy with...the problem is that you may not be

 

[EvilTwin]

I got a small BTA about 6 months ago. At first, I set it on top of my LR and within an hour is had moved to the underside into a small cave/hole in the rock. Fearing the lack of light issues, I turned the rock over. The BTA stayed put. From my understanding, they will try to find a place to protect their foot and therefore move to a hole. Since that time, my BTA survived a tank move to a larger tank, it split shortly thereafter, each bta began hosting my two ocellaris clowns and just lived through a huge PH spike in the last week that wiped out a lot of snails in my tank. People say that anemones are really delicate, and I am by no means an expert, but BTAs are pretty resilient creatures IME.

 

[roka64]

Quick question for all you owners of BTAs.....How did you handle yours, from acclimation to putting in the tank. Sorry if I hijacked this thread, it just seems there is a lot of expereince here and I am planning on adding one eventually.

 

[john0087]

Quick question for all you owners of BTAs.....How did you handle yours, from acclimation to putting in the tank

first, make sure you buy a nice dark green or brown specimin. As nice as the white ones look, I have learned that if they are white, then they have started to expel their zooxanthellae

My LFS where I buy a lot of my livestock is only 5 minutes away.

After that, I temp aclimated the anomone for 30 minutes. Then I drip aclimated. When the bag got too full of water, I poured some out and continued the drip. I dripped for about 1.5 hours.

After I was pretty sure that most of the LFS water was exchanged with tank water, I pulled the bag into the tank and slipped the BTA into the tank to make sure that he was not exposed to air.

This was all done with the only the Antinic lights on.

He moved around for a bit until he found the cave that he has been living in for the past 6 days. I am starting to get a little worried as there is no way he is getting enough light.

I will be out of town the next couple of day and when I get back, i am going to start target feeding with small pieces of shrimp, which will be about 12 days after he was introduced into the tank. I will also be getting an anemone fish one week after that.

I have also been monitoring the water params very closely.

I have been doing a lot of research on anemone keeping and the stats show that less than 45% of new anemone's do not last after the first 3 months with hobbyiest with less than 2 years of experience. (from Host Anemones by Joyce Wilkerson)

I am doing all that I can to beat that, we'll see.

HTH, sorry for the long post. Maybe someone with more experience could critic my process and we could all learn.

Thanks

John