protecting BTAs

[jelwyoming]

For several years, I had maintained a GBTA in my 120g reef. Unfortunately, this winter, a burglar left our front door open in
-20F weather, freezing my tank and all the inhabitants. Over the last last 3 months or so, I have re-cycled the tank....only the LR survived and begun to restock the tank. Water is about perfect. I added a GBTA a few weeks back. It was doing wonderfully until the middle of one night that it was sucked through a vortex pump.
Well, I learned from that and cover the pump better. Added another GBTA. This one did even better, expanding in it's new home near the top of the tank. That is until it expanded enough to get pull on by the overflow. I did think much of that....oooppss...8 hours later it was mush smeared over the overflow.
How are you BTA keepers keeping your animals out of dangerous places? My overflow slots are only 3/16", but that was enough.
What to do?

 

[CaliReefer12]

the best thing you can do is find a nice piece of live rock with a hole in it for the bta to find its base. place the rock with the bta in a spot in the tank with sufficient light, decent flow and feed it every few days. hopefully it will stay where you put it. try to make sure its not anywhere near corals it will sting, powerheads, overflows and whatever. All you can do is hope it wont move, they will go where they want to go though.

 

[jelwyoming]

That's been my problem....they keep moving around and getting caught in pumps or overflow. They say to cover those.....how do you go about covering your overflow...

 

[CaliReefer12]

there was a good thread on how to go about doing that.
heres a link
http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1578007

 

[jelwyoming]

Thanks for the link. Those are some ideas.
I a thing about usinga any sponge material in the reef though; they end up being nitrate farms.
The needle point screen was interesting, however, my overflow holes aren't much larger and it still pulled it apart.
Maybe I am just unlucky with it.
I have my new GBTA in there now and he's staying put. I hope he stays right there.