Help on BTA's

I got my first BTA not too long ago. First day it clinged on a LR real quick, opened up nicely. My percula was in heaven! The BTA slowly creeped in the rear of the tank and ended up under a crevice and retracted itself. I'm not sure if this a normal thing. I have a 60gal 48" wide, 16"tall w/ jbj formosa dx 2 10k DL, 2 tru 03 blue actinics (anyone think if this is too much lighting for my tank?), Fluval 304, Bak Pak 2, 300gph powerhead, LR $ LS. Ammonia -0, PH-8.2, Nitrate -0.

Any replies will be greatly appreciated.

 

Joven,

Anenomes are some of the most challenging animals to maintain in an acquarium. What is so perplexing is no matter how hard you try to eradicate Aiptasia and Mojano anenomes they won't quit, yet BTAs, LTAs, and the such can be finicky. The sad fact of the matter is in the wild these beautiful animals live for decades and yet the average life span in the home acquaria is less than five years. Not a very good success rate.

Lots of wild caught BTAs are handled very poorly and are in real trouble by the time they are delivered to the LFS and no matter what you do they are doomed by the time you get them into your tank.

In your situation as long as you get get your BTA to eat you should be OK. One of the things that you should do when purchasing a fish is to make sure it is eating at the LFS. Same thing should apply to anenomes in my book. A good method of feeding is to target feed mysis shrimp or krill either by hand or with a turkey baster. If it grabs the food in its tentacles and closes its body around the mouth, that is a good indication that it is relatively healthy and it may just need more time to acclimate to your tank.

Keep us posted on your BTAs progress. You don't want it to die and foul your tank. Realy smelly and yucky business.

 

Just to add to Craig's reply. Very often were you want your BTA and were it wants to go are very different places. I also reasently purchaced a BTA and it did a similar thing. It found a low light level place to spend it time. just two days ago after about a month of slowly streching further and further into the light, it decided to move. it is now in a great spot for viewing and for my clowns. give it time and make sure you target feed it as Craig explained.

Jason

 

You guys use turkey basters to target feed?

 

Ya, It's really easy to target your subject and just squeeze the baster it the correct flow so that the BTA can grab the food.


J

 

Yup! Just like jakets said!

 

Is there any chance of recovery after Blown Butty Syndrome?

 

I would have to say no

Check out this thread

Anenome problems

J