What is my problem with RBTA's?

tingram · #1 04/25/2004, 12:21 PM

Hi,

I have bought 3 RBTA's from different sources over the past six months and seem to manage to do a great job of letting them die. One lasted a couple of months before giving up, it would even grab food from my hand when feeding.

They all seemed to find a good spot to stay, typically behind the rocks, before giving it all up.

Water quality is pretty good, unless there is something that I am not testing, or the tests that I am doing are inaccurate...

No Ammonia, Nitrates at 5PPM, Salinity at 1.025, temp between 79 and 81, ph at around 8.2...

I am using VHO lights at themoment, could that be a problem? I have 640W of them on my 6' 125G...

Please help me figure out my problem, I would really like to keep one of these, but don't want to kill off any more.

PS.
I also have a pretty big green carpet anemone that has been doing really well for about 8 months now, and my female perc just recently noticed it and now sleeps in it at night...

Thank You,

Tony.

mandktod · #2 04/25/2004, 12:49 PM

How long has your tank been up and running? It take as long as 6 months to get a stable enough environment for a BTA, they don't deal well with changes.

tingram · #3 04/25/2004, 02:00 PM

It's been running for almost 2 years, with really no changes... All the fish are pretty happy in there too...

Tony.

finding nemo · #4 04/25/2004, 05:22 PM

What were or are you feeding them? Any pictures of them? Or any pics before you lost them?

4runner · #5 04/25/2004, 06:30 PM

This could be one of those cases of differing species harming one another in a tank. Perhaps the carpet is sending out chemicals/nematocysts that are harmful to the btas. Not scientifically proven, but there have been hobbyists that have stated this.

tingram · #6 04/25/2004, 10:42 PM

Was feeding them some shrimp, mysis shrimp.. one would even eat the Formula frozen stuff from the LFS...

No pics though... was hard to get any as they always hid behind the rocks...

Bougt a new nitrate kit today, one of the quick dip kits, tried it and it showed that my nitrate levels are through the roof... not sure how much I believe it coz with nitrate levels this high I would assume to see everything floating

The ammonia level from the same test kit show nothing at all, so I'm not sure what is going on...

T.

tingram · #7 04/25/2004, 10:45 PM

4runner,

you may be onto something, I wish it could be proven, but I doubt that I will be buying any more BTA's... at least until i get this mystery figured out.
T.
PS.
I am taking a sample of my water to the LFS to see what their results on the nitrates say...