Feeding your Nem? Stop and read this first.

[Adam sahut]

I’ve noticed they can handle higher light and get way more color/brighter with spot feeding. Just sharing what I’ve noticed through the years

 

[Indymann99]

I haven’t directly fed my nems in 5yrs. One thing I will say is NEVER NEVER NEVER feed “Silversides”... I have done this 2x times 10yrs ago and lost nems within 2 weeks EACH time. Just my personal experience but I am finding that my nems are doing fine without direct feeding.

https://flic.kr/p/243vD6X

 

[ReefTeacher]

I never fed my bubble tips when I had them, and they would split on occasion; nice trade in sales at LFS. But I have since moved to a Magnificent. The one I have currently I have had only since the spring. It was VERY healthy when I got it (before the Indonesia ban) I did not medicate and put it directly into the display. I let it settle for about 3 months without clowns or any feeding. It found a nice high place with good variable current and high light. Once it was established, I added clowns and started feeding twice a week. It is now growing quickly. I will continue to feed until it fills the space I want; then I will cut back to keep it a manageable size.

I think one of the problems with feeding is people start too soon. Anemones adapt slowly, there is no rush. Give it time and good light and current, they will respond.

And science most certainly does change: we have relooked at the gravity thing and come up with General Relativity and Quantum Gravity Models. So the Aiptasia article from decades ago may have limited application in our tanks.

 

[xellos88]

I think it depends on the type of anemone. Gigs and Haddonis live in the shallows in the tropics which have a lot of tiny potential prey. And I think any marine based meaty food are fine, the most critical requirement is they need to be really fresh.

 

[AaronUK84]

Hi guys. New to reef keeping as the fiance wanted another tank ( she had one years ago) but my anemone is looking like it's going to eat itself.
I don't mean it's pulling it's tentacles in to feed I mean the tentacles look like they're in it's mouth [emoji33]
She's at work and I have offered up frozen food cut down into small pieces but I'm not sure what else to do. Its shrunk itself down and looks like it's hanging and limp. Any advice as she's not around right now and I'm a newbie.

 

[Hector De Jesus]

Anemone’s have a symbiotic relationship with something they host and it’s not Clownfish. Just like many of our tank inhabitants, Anemone’s play host to an algae called Zooxanthellae (Zoos from here forward). The Anemone provides a safe place for the algae to grow and survive, in exchange the anemone benefits from the oxygen and sugars

Ok that’s great but what does that have to do with feeding our anemones? Essentially the Zoos inside our nems are not limited by the amount of food we feed the host anemone. Now don’t get me wrong, that doesn’t mean our nems don’t “need” to eat. We all know something has to feed that Algae, usually some type of phosphate. Where many make the mistake is it has been observed and theorized that the Zoos get enough organics from the natural sea water environment that they don’t need to be fed to keep the Zoos at a stable level.

Ok, but surely feeding your Anemone can have some benefit correct? The answer to that is yes. Essentially you can help speed up the growth of your Anemone with feeding, but there is a limit.

Ok so does it hurt to feed too much? The answer is nobody honestly knows, but essentially all you are doing is adding more ammonia to the tank which needs to be processed and the anemone and it’s hosted Zoos are gaining nothing from your feeding.

So at this point you’re probably asking yourself

“How often should you feed?”

I’ve personally not found the scientific or anecdotal evidence to give EXACT 100% accurate numbers, but here are the recommendations I would make:

If your only interest is to ensure your Anemone has enough N & P that the parameters of your tank are not inhibiting it’s growth, feed once a month.

If your intent is to grow the anemone and try to accelerate or at least fuel your anemone to the max to achieve best possible growth rates, feed once a week.

I’ll cover what to feed and how much in another post at a later time, but both science and testimonials of hobbyists tells us you don’t have to feed at all if you don’t want to AND you can definitely feed too much.

Source: A Biology of Sea Anemones by J. Malcom Shick

Thanks for the advice

 

[Steve Bullington]

Question about my BTA
So I recently found out my BTA is from the ocean and not tank raised. It is supposed to be a green one, it had a slight green Hugh to it. It still does, I think it's slightly bleached. I know wild BTA take awhile to adjust to high intensity lights. I have had it for roughly 1 month. It started off moving all over the tank and literally did laps. The BTA has been here for 3 weeks, it seams happy and will except food. There is NO direct light on it what so ever. The pic is hard to show depth but it's 2 to 3 inch under my Montipora. It's a huge Montipora for this tank 14x8 or so. My clown is about 2.5 to 3" and recently lost his ( soon to be her ) mate. So I know they go where they want etc. Any addvice ? Should I help it along in movement? Break my Montipora up? Let nature take its course etc? Just throwing ideas out there good and bad. I aslo have picked up 3 other that are Rose tips, one may be a rainbow. Anyways I want to get all my nems straight before I add more clown fish. I'm turning my tank into a harem tank and will be adding 7 to 12 more Clowns.

Tank: about 50 gallon
Age : 3.5 years
Equipment :Built in Refugium, protein skimmer, ATO, grow light in refugium, 1 kessil A350 ( I like this light better, but it's manual) tuna blue, 1 kessil A360 WE tuna blue, external canister filter rated for 100gallon tank, jebao eco propeller pump.

Ammonia: 0
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: 0
pH: 8.3
Specific Gravity: 1.025
Phosphate: 0
KH ( now this is odd) I use 2 different test kits from same manufacturers and get different results. API REEF MASTER TEST KIT ( dkh 10 or 179ppm) now the test strips read at 240+ ppm KH

 

[Susan Bates]

I feed mine once a week, I started with 1 now there are 5 I would leave him

 

[laverda]

It looks very bleached. I would not consider one Kessil on a 50 gallon a high intensity light. It may actually be wondering around looking for more light, but hard to say. It is not happy for some reason. What do you have the Kessil set at? Do you have decent flow in the tank? Zero nitrates is a concern as anemones love nitrates in the water and use it as a food source. They will be very happy with nitrates at levels as high as 120ppm. Not happy at zero. Zero phosphates is not good either. All corals need small amounts of nitrates and lesser amounts of phosphates. How are you keeping you levels that low with a canister filter?

 

[smartwater101]

I feed my LT nem every couple days for 2 weeks. Then nothing for 2 weeks. (Generally. Its not a hard/fast rule.) I usually feed a large chunk jumbo shrimp or scallop.

Its pretty easy to know if its hungry or not. It will immediately close up when given food. If not hungry, it simply tilts over and drops the food onto the sand. My nem doesn't like high flow so i dont have to worry about food accidentally being blown away from it. If the food is on the sandbed, it was intended.

Its one of a couple things that managed to survive a major crash in 2017. This thing is tough as nails. Before the crash it was almost 2' across when open. Nowadays its a little over 1'. But thats likely due to some inconsistent feeding on my part as of late.

 

[sixty_reefer]

Only got experience with haddoni, I’ve been caring for this specimen since it was 1in and it grew into a healthy 8in in the last 6 months, the main thing I’ve observed is that a healthy well fed haddoni won’t eat any of my fish.

Pic wend she was a baby

 

[Steve Bullington]

It looks very bleached. I would not consider one Kessil on a 50 gallon a high intensity light. It may actually be wondering around looking for more light, but hard to say. It is not happy for some reason. What do you have the Kessil set at? Do you have decent flow in the tank? Zero nitrates is a concern as anemones love nitrates in the water and use it as a food source. They will be very happy with nitrates at levels as high as 120ppm. Not happy at zero. Zero phosphates is not good either. All corals need small amounts of nitrates and lesser amounts of phosphates. How are you keeping you levels that low with a canister filter?

 

[vetteguy53081]

great info. I read something similar years ago and for that, I rarely if ever feed my nems. I notice the clowns dropping scraps into them as well as suspended food landing on their tentacles and then being drawn into their core that tells me they are being fed without a contribution from me.

 

[Steve Bullington]

@ Laverda Re-read my post. Not just a canister filter, and not just one kessil. As far as Nutrient export, water changes, and I have allot of plants, and I use GAC, Seachem PuriGen, clear fx pro. All readings are after water change and some media changes. Nitrates usually just barely detectable when they do rise. And as stated nem hasn't moved in three weeks. It super happy the last couple of days, puffed out and getting color back.

NOTE: Ignore black box , not normally there but had to put my son's fish in timeout. Anyone want a Domino damsel? And yes I told him they are A hole fish before he got it...lol

 

[leorii2000]

Is that advice about feeding also concerns Haddoni carpets? My Haddoni is about 12” I feed it shrimp a couple times a week. After feeding it looks very proud and opens up,showing off.

 

[OrionN]

I don’t think generalized feeding recommendation is accurate. Different species evolved and have different feeding habits. Certainly the carpets can benefit from a lot more feeding than BTA or Magnifica. LTA, Malu and Crispa is in between.
I feed my carpets chunks of fish enemy other days and he goes from 4 inches to 20inches in 12 months. Same feeding regiment will cause my Magnificas to deflated for a few days.

 

[gig 'em]

I agree with OrionN. I stopped feeding my mags readily years ago. I was able to grow a H. magnifica from the size of a small orange to the size of a basketball in a year with regular feedings. Now I don't feed them at all to keep them a manageble size and they survive just fine.

Same thing happens with gigs, but at a slightly slower pace in my experience. Gigs also take food more readily, which suggests to me they are evolved to catch more food. I also have 4 gigs in one tank with one as a control that is separate in it's own container where it doesn't have a clownfish or access to bits of food during feeding. The colors are more muted and the growth rate has been negligble while the other 3 gigs that have daily access to food during feeding time have tripled in size and have dark rich colors. To me this suggests that gigs suffer without regular sources of food.

 

[balajeek15]

Whats the right Alk for bta's, I have 2 green and 1 red and i currently have 8.2 alk, Nitrate around 5ppm and Phos around 0.04, can't seem to keep them open, its retracts many times everyday.

 

[laverda]

@ Laverda Re-read my post. Not just a canister filter, and not just one kessil. As far as Nutrient export, water changes, and I have allot of plants, and I use GAC, Seachem PuriGen, clear fx pro. All readings are after water change and some media changes. Nitrates usually just barely detectable when they do rise. And as stated nem hasn't moved in three weeks. It super happy the last couple of days, puffed out and getting color back.

I would cut down on GAC use what ever till you get some 5-10 ppm nitrate and a little phosphate showing.

 

[laverda]

Whats the right Alk for bta's, I have 2 green and 1 red and i currently have 8.2 alk, Nitrate around 5ppm and Phos around 0.04, can't seem to keep them open, its retracts many times everyday.

Those numbers should be fine. They are not super fussy about ALK if it is stable.