What do host anemones eat in the wild?
- Thread starter ThRoewer
- Start date
saltwaterguy718
In Memoriam
That sounds about right.
tkeracer619
New member
I have a ton of pods and shrimp in my tank and I see the nems snatch them up daily. I know a couple of anemone propagators who do not clean their tanks Algae and rubble all over the place. It's a great way to get them a steady supply of food.
OrionN
Moved on
What they eat varies with species. I think carpet are fish eater. There is a paper some where that notes that there are a lot of scallop shells under one of the anemone species. I highly doubt that Crispa, Malu, Magnifica, Aurora can catch a fish of any size.
In my tank I see anemones, mainly Haddoni and Gigantea, eat a lot of worm that swim around and spawn at night. I have substrate worms in my sand bed that go up at night to spawn. They swim around pretty much with random movement.. If they touch one of my carpets, they are history. My carpets make frequent meals of my snails. The can get rather sick when they eat a large Bristtle worm. I am sure any fish eggs and larvae though my carpet get eaten too. Arthropods with the hard shell seem to be resistant to carpet sting. Shrimps can craw across my carpets without much problem.
In my tank I see anemones, mainly Haddoni and Gigantea, eat a lot of worm that swim around and spawn at night. I have substrate worms in my sand bed that go up at night to spawn. They swim around pretty much with random movement.. If they touch one of my carpets, they are history. My carpets make frequent meals of my snails. The can get rather sick when they eat a large Bristtle worm. I am sure any fish eggs and larvae though my carpet get eaten too. Arthropods with the hard shell seem to be resistant to carpet sting. Shrimps can craw across my carpets without much problem.
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Big Dog
New member
I have a 150 gallon rubbermaid vat filled with LR running a cheap Aqueon Quietflow, ASM G2 skimmer, and 2 - 250MH. The vat had nothing else in it but a very small cleaner crew (algae everywhere). I do very little to it AFA maintenance. I do know there are tones of pods and worms in it.
A fellow reefer gave me a RBTA a fews years ago and I just threw it in the vat. Never fed it and it grew to an enormous size before it split (I believe a heater failure spurred the split, temp drop to mid 60's). After it split I started feeding them a small piece of fresh scallop once a week. It's an anemone breeding ground now ...........
BonsaiNut
Premium Member
They are opportunistic omnivores. That said, tropical anemone-fish-hosting anemones get most of their energy from the sun. You can grow a S. gigantea from the size of a quarter to an adult in a sunlit tank with no supplemental feeding (aside from waterborne microscopic critters and possibly detritus). I think supplemental feeding just causes them to grow larger/faster, but is not a requirement for growth or health.
Winwood
New member
I agree with BonsaiNut, but have also seen photos of haddoni and gigs consuming fish they captured during low tide. I assume the size of the pool they were sharing most likely caused their prey to bump into them. Magnificas occur in similar habit, and although they aren't as potent stings as the previous two species, I imagine they would also take advantage of a similar situation.
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phender
Active member
I have seen pictures like that as well, including a large fish being eaten by a magnifica. A couple of the pictures looked like they may have been staged by the photographer, since the fish in question didn't exactly look "fresh".
That being said, it is obvious by their behavior in our tanks that all carpets and probably mags as well, are certainly capable of catching fish and eating them. I just don't think they make up a very large percentage of their yearly diet. Given the fact that they don't need to eat much of anything at all, (BonsaiNut's info is based on gigs that were raised in clam farm raceways and are not just his opinion) it doesn't make sense that they would risk injury by eating large fish on any regular basis. (I'm talking from an evolutionary standpoint, not a conscious decision by the anemone.
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That being said, it is obvious by their behavior in our tanks that all carpets and probably mags as well, are certainly capable of catching fish and eating them. I just don't think they make up a very large percentage of their yearly diet. Given the fact that they don't need to eat much of anything at all, (BonsaiNut's info is based on gigs that were raised in clam farm raceways and are not just his opinion) it doesn't make sense that they would risk injury by eating large fish on any regular basis. (I'm talking from an evolutionary standpoint, not a conscious decision by the anemone.
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