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