BTA bubble tips flow related?

[phurst]

I have always understood whether a BTA had actual bubble tips or not was due to some unknown factor or factors. I noticed the other day that my GBTA seems to dispute this. It is situated in a location where the right side of the oral disk is nearly completely shaded from flow, but the left side is in direct flow from a MJ 900. The right side is decidedly bubble free, the left definitely has bubbles. Lighting and everything else is consistent across the whole oral disk.

 

[rwb500]

interesting. the next step would be to either increase the flow for the slow side or decrease the flow for the fast side.

 

[Tmoriarty]

My tank, high flow results in longer tentacles low flow more bubbled. I have seen this in every BTA I have introduced, I have 2x MP40's, so most any BTA in the tank get sa lot of flow and has long tentacles. While They are in the bag or the LFS they have very low flow and have very bubbled tips. I have put nems in breeder boxes in my 203g and the next morning they were bubbly, the box got very low flow through it compared to the rest of the tank. I moved one nem to my 55g (uses the same water) the lighting is different but the flow is much lower also. The nems bubble up in the 55g with the lower flow.

I am a firm believer that the tentacle bubbles are not random but are instead related to flow. This is seen by nems in the wild having half bubbled and half long tentacles (the bubbled side gets the same light and water... but very possibly different flow).

I think it is far less random than people think.

 

[sirbazz]

Our first BTA, which we've only had around 7 weeks, displays bubble tips during the day but loses them once all the lights are out.

I have come to the conclusion that BTA's are like most women in that we'll never understand the why's and when's of what they do.

 

[rwb500]

i've had multiple RBTA's in my tanks, sometimes in areas of very low flow, and never got any bubble tips. Flow might be a factor but it is certainly not the only factor.

 

[hypnoj]

i've had multiple RBTA's in my tanks, sometimes in areas of very low flow, and never got any bubble tips. Flow might be a factor but it is certainly not the only factor.

I agree. I have several RBTA's in my tank, some in high flow area's, some in low flow area's, some in high light area's, some in low light area's. I have yet to see any correlation between which ones are bubbled and which aren't.