BTA Hiding

Haleyscales00167 · Feb 24, 2020

I have had my green BTA for about a week and a half. He was out for a couple of days but then decided to move and moved up under my live rock to where I can barely see him. He has been there for about a week. Is there anything I can do to encourage him to move or should I just wait it out and see if he moves back out into the open? Where is he there is hardly any light getting to him and it makes it very hard to try and direct feed him anything.

mattybecks · Feb 25, 2020

Welcome to reef2reef Haley!
I have had bubble tips in the past and I have the same things happened to me. They moved around a lot and most of the time stay hidden or settle down out of view. I had two BTA's (at different times) and rehomed them both. I found the Macrodactyla Doreensis (corkscrew/long tentacle) anemone much easier to care for, and they don't move around as much. They prefer to stay put. If you wanted an easy anemone.

two of the most common reasons as to why your BTA is hiding: (it would help to know more about your set up)
- Your lighting is too bright, and the BTA is not getting used to it.
- The current is too strong and your BTA is trying to hide from it.

My Doreensis anemone.

Jjd531 · Feb 25, 2020

Personally I would try to manually move it to a spot you believe would be ideal for it. I had a big green BTA die because the thing would not stay anywhere period, at which point it finally made it's way behind my rock work. Didnt want to rip up the rock work so I let it go thinking it would do its thing and it started started decaying.. bad, so I put it in a qt tank and after about two hours this thing was shedding bits all over the tank and looked real bad so I tossed it because it was just polluting my water. My current two, I put them in spots I thought were good, they moved around a little bit to 'get comfortable' but haven't moved for the most part.

Haleyscales00167 · Feb 25, 2020

Maybe I can try flipping the rock he is under over. But the flow in my tank isn’t super strong or anything. And my lighting hasn’t changed but I can try and maybe turn my lighting down a bit and see if I can keep him out in the light.