Feeding and Digestion in a GBTA

[Vitaly]

I recently added a nice Green Bubble Tip Anemone to my tank.
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It was been about a week and it appears to be healthy, insofar as it will grab and react to food. I have three quick questions about keeping this anemone:

<B>1) Can an anemone be overfed?</B>
For example, there are obvious negative health effects on fish that are provided too much food. Will similar problems been seen in an anemone? I do plan to target feed 1-2 times per week, as this seems to be the common practice my all anemone keepers...but was just curious whether anyone has seen the effects of overfeeding. I have seen articles that state excess food will lead to accelerated splitting.

<B>2) Will I be able to see any digestive activity or digested material?</B>
I am a bit unclear about this. I have read that anemones will regurgitate food. But, my interpretation has been that this implies that the anemone is not actually digesting and absorbing nutrients. Thus, am I correct in thinking that if I observe the anemone eating...but do not see any regurgitation that everthing is well?

Thank you in advance for your comments.

 

[Anemone]

Vitaly,

The negative I have heard associated with overfeeding is undigested food in the anemone's "stomach" being a route for bacterial growth and potentially bacterial infection of the anemone. I haven't experienced this, and I don't know that it has ever been shown to occur, but that is the contention.

Regurgitation can be both undigested food as well as undigestible item - such as fish bones or shells. Regurgitation is one of the reasons that I am not convinced that the bacterial infection argument above is that sound - IME, if anemones either aren't "hungry" or aren't eating, they regurgitate the undigested food bolus within a few hours of consumption (so it shouldn't really be an infection danger).

My RBTAs rarely regurgitate anything - I get small, dark feces expelled, but nothing along the lines of a bolus.

FWIW,
Kevin

 

[redvipe2010]

Vitaly, I agree with Anemone. If you don't feed large portions, you may not see any regurgitation. What you will see is your anemone expelling waste. The first time you see it it will probably scare you. The anemone will shrink up and look pretty bad.

Here are some pics of a healthy anemone expelling waste.

http://www.karensroseanemones.com/deflating.htm

This is also the best website I am aware of that deals specifically with these anemones.

What are you feeding?

 

[Vitaly]

<B>Anemone and redvipe2010</B>

Thanks for the feedback. The anemone is still doing well and looks healthy. I still have not seen any regurgitation or defecation, but am not too wordied about it.

To answer the question about feeding...so far have fed pieces of whole Krill, Rod's Food, Formula Cubes...and that is about it so far. I will add other food items to the rotation with time.