Trouble with feeding my rose bubble anemone

D

Dimitrios555

New member
I have a 23 nano. I have 2 cleaner shrimp and a fire. Anyway whenever I try and feed the anemone, even today I put a piece of shrimp right into anemone tentacle and he put towards his mouth - but every time the cleaner shrimp come and aggressively steal it. I see the anemone trying to keep it and the shrimp apparently are immune to his sting. Is this a common thing? Should I get rid of the cleaners? I mean they do a good job cleaning otherwise!




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My cleaner shrimp is very annoying, he always steal these less sticky anemones' food too. It happens very often for btas, sebae and LTAs. You have to guard the anemone when it's eating. And feed the shrimp something to keep it occupied. He can actually take the food out of the anemone' mouth and it might hurt the anemone.

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Will anemone live if I don't feed it directly? Like does he pick up debris from the water and such like coral?


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As long as your parameters are within reason and the lighting is sufficient the anemone doesn't really need to be fed IME. It will pick up a few scraps here and there, but the lighting is basically what keeps it alive.
 
You do not have to feed it. I feed mine because I want it to grow faster.

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What kind of anemone do you have?

I have quite a few and I've found the really colorful rock flower anemones do much better if they get fed occasionally. I think most of them are collected wild and at a depth that is lower light, so they don't due photosynthesis as well as the simple rock flowers that come from shallow water. At least that's been my experience. I have RBTA, maxi-mini anemones and curly-cue anemones in the same tank and they all do fine without being fed.

Try dropping a clip with nori down near the sand on the other side of the tank. When the shrimp get to feeding on it, try feeding the anemone.
 
Lol so I throw some stuff on the opposite side of tank to distract shrimp (mind u this is a 23 gallon nano) and successful fed my anemone. I stayed around watching for five more minutes then I fed the shrimp some more and left. I came back about 15 min later and both shrimp are like tearing apart the poor anemone. Anemone is like fighting for his food but to no avail - the shrimps got all the food back from him. I felt so bad. Damn shrimp. Anyway the question is for someone who has experienced this or watched an anemone eat.... how long does it take them? That is how long would I have to keep distracting shrimp to assure anemone digests the food deep enough that the shrimp can no longer steal it? 20 min? 3 hour? I have no idea


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FWIW I got rid of one adult cleaner shrimp I had in my 20 gallon tank because it was stealing food from the LPS corals, walking all over everything etc. It was just more trouble than it was worth. I can't imagine having two cleaners and a fire shrimp in about the same size tank.
 
That's great, but definitely keep your eyes on those shrimp. Once they make the connection between the anemone & food the harassment can be relentless. They might try to dig that food out if they can.
 
I never feed any of my btas. They will pull ammonia and phosphate directly from the wster so the best way to feed them is get them some clownfish.
 
I've usually fed mine with a large pipette and just keep it there and push the cleaners away until the anemone has fully ingested the food (when I did feed). The fire shrimp I've had have been the worst in this regard but they're too pretty not to have in the tank.
 
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