BTA Warfare??

RyanO89 · Jul 22, 2019

Hello all,

I have had this sherman BTA for several months and I have noticed that it appears to be changing from red to a brownish color while it's tentacles appear to be shrinking. I apologize for the poor photo quality. I have been keeping anemones for close to two years now and have seen this once before when I added a black widow to my tank with a large rainbow BTA. They appeared fine for the first few months but then eventually both began to show the same symptoms. All three are still alive but have nearly no tentacles. I have read several forum posts from other sites that seem to mention that sometimes different morphs (or wild caught vs aquacultured) can fight one another via chemicals or release of nematocytes into the water column. I am curious to know if others have found difficulty with keeping various types of BTAs. I feed twice a week using Vitalis anemone pellets. I have two clowns which are hosted by every anemone as well as a yellow coris wrasse. I keep the tank (24 gallon display 18" cube) under a Kessil a360X, 78 degrees, run a small amount of Rowaphos in mini reactor, nano bag of Chemipure Blue, with parameters reading:

Nitrate: 8-10ppm
Phosphate: .04ppm
Calcium: 440
Mag: 1400
Alk: 7.8

Also recently completed an ICP testing which showed no obvious red flags.

rkpetersen · Jul 22, 2019

You could try more CPB, add Purigen, and turn up the reactor flow rate.

laverda · Jul 22, 2019

I have heard that you should not mix different species or even non clowns of the same species from anomone experts. They will use chemical warfair against each other. I have 20-24 BTA anemones of 3 different origins in my tank. I have not had an issue that I know of, but I have 350 gallons total volume. Actually now that I think about it more all of the clowns of one strain are smaller than the original was and the other strains are. I think your just asking for to much in a tank that size. Especially when a healthy BTA will grow to 16+”.