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View Full Version : My RBTA's journey (Pictures and Video)


phasezero
11/04/2011, 09:41 PM
I bought this large RBTA for 45 bucks from my LFS back in April 2011. He was nicely colored and had long tentacles when he came from the store. This video of it was taken in June when i put it in my 20g nano tank. Since the day i bought it, it was terrible at taking food. The tentacles were not sticky at all and it would never close up hold food. I would literally have to hold a piece of shrimp at it's mouth until it took it in.

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This picture was taken August 23rd. It pretty much lost most of it's color and it's tentacles became little strings. I was going through a major cyano problem along with high nitrates in the 20g. I hated this tank and wanted to throw it out the window.

http://i64.photobucket.com/albums/h195/meldav86/316951_10150271477407549_554147548_7966026_634586_n.jpg

I then went on a 4 week vacation and had to leave the tank in the hands of inexperienced family members. I came back and all our fish tanks were disgusting. The anemone shriveled to the size of a coke can with it's mouth inside out all the time. I was ready to put this thing out of misery as i didn't want it to die inside my tank. As a last ditch effort i transferred it back to my 55g tank. By this time, his tentacles had reduced to little pimple sized nubs.

Over a period 4 weeks, it slowly grew it's tentacles back and regained it's color. Around the 3rd week his tentacles were extremely round and bubbly. I wish it stayed that way but this is how it looks now. I now feed it a small piece of shrimp every 2 or 3 days rather than every 2 or 3 weeks. It's tentacles are very sticky now and he can pull a piece of food to it's mouth even from the far edges.

http://i64.photobucket.com/albums/h195/meldav86/Anemone089.jpg
http://i64.photobucket.com/albums/h195/meldav86/Anemone092.jpg

skinpuppi
11/05/2011, 07:06 AM
Sounds like you need to go on vacation more often. I will have to try that too and see what it does for my tanks. haha

m758b033
11/05/2011, 07:31 AM
Looks like it made an excellent recovery. What tyoe of shrimp were you feeding it? I have a rbta I bought from performance bleached badly, and am in the process of nursing it back to glory.

phasezero
11/05/2011, 10:21 AM
Looks like it made an excellent recovery. What tyoe of shrimp were you feeding it? I have a rbta I bought from performance bleached badly, and am in the process of nursing it back to glory.

I'm using raw farm raised white shrimp from the grocery store. Every 2 or 3 days i'll feed a small slice the size of about a 2 stacked nickles. I've found this way to work best for me so that the anemone never barfs it up. I bought selcon recently to soak the shrimp in but i can't say how well it works or if it works at all yet.

m758b033
11/05/2011, 04:50 PM
Awesome thank you. I gave it a pea sized piece of shrimp yesterday and it took it like a pro