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How Often To Feed An Anemone!

With the popularity of keeping reef tanks as well as adding anemones into other types of aquarium on the rise, we are seeing more and more people reaching out with various questions about taking care of their anemones.

We do see a wide range of questions about caring for anemones but one of the more common and more important ones is about how often you should feed an anemone.

With there being so many people new to keeping anemones in their tanks asking about feeding their new additions, we wanted to publish our own article about feeding an anemone to try and answer the common questions that we see asked from the community time and time again.

Our hope is that we will be able to help our readers better understand how they are able to easily take care of their anemones and help them flourish in their tanks.

As we covered in our article going over using fake anemones for your clownfish, a fake anemone can be an excellent alternative to a real anemone in some situations.

They can serve as something for a clownfish to host as well as general decoration in your aquarium too without the need to feed, clean or maintain the anemone making it very beginner-friendly.

If you are set on a live anemone, we would highly recommend one of the bubble tipped anemones due to them being one of the best beginner-friendly live anemones available.

What Should You Feed An Anemone?

Different anemone will require different food options but many anemone can be fed prawns, shrimp, fish, and a range of other foods provided they are cut small enough to easily fit into the mouth of the anemone.

You can also get a number of commercial anemone food products on the market that are nutritionally complete for the anemone and can help promote healthy growth and colouration.

If you do just want a pre-optimised product to feed your anemone that is nutritionally complete then a pre-made anemone food is going to be the best option to take.

They are easy to feed to your anemone and work well with majority of the more popular anemones that aquarium keepers keep no matter the specific type of aquarium that you are keeping.

Many people will feed their anemones slices of prawns, shrimp, and fish but this can sometimes present a problem with your fish in your aquarium eating the food before it gets to your anemone.

This is where an anemone feeder can help as it allows you to quickly and easily get the slices of food to the anemone before your fish are able to get it.

“Monterey Aquarium. Anemone” by Bernard Spragg is licensed under CC0 1.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/?ref=openverse&atype=rich

How Often Should You Feed An Anemone?

The feeding frequency of your anemones will depend on the specific anemone you are keeping with feeding frequencies commonly ranging from once every couple of days to once every week.

Some reef tanks can be set up to totally remove the need for you to manually feed your anemone too with the natural ecosystem being able to supply it with all the food it requires but this does tend to be for intermediate and advanced reef keepers.

You really do have to do your research for the specific anemone that you are planning to keep when it comes to how often you should feed your anemone though.

Some can be overfed without issue and will simply grow at an increased pace whereas other, more sensitive anemones will have issues if you overfeed them.

Some anemones will let you know that they want feeding though either by swelling up, stretching up or tweaking their color making it obvious that the anemone is trying to get food.

This can make your job much easier as you simply watch for these signs in your anemone and then feed it as required when you see them.

How Much Should I Feed My Sea Anemone?

It can be problematic to try and work out exactly how much you should feed your anemone while still ensuring that you are offering your anemone a nutritionally complete diet if you feed it regular foods.

Some anemone species will overfeed too so it is generally better to feed small amounts of food over an extended period of time.

This is why a pre-made anemone food can end up being the better option for anyone new to keeping anemones who are worried about either over or underfeeding their anemone.

Simply follow the easy to follow dosing instructions on the label of these pre-made anemone foods make it easy to workout exactly how much you should be feeding your anemone per feeding session.

We have seen people on social media recommended that you should feed a certain amount of food by weight for every inch in width of your anemone.

We would not recommend that you use these feeding systems as different anemone species require different amounts of calories making it hard to use this system for feeding your anemone prawns or krill.

Conclusion

That brings our article going over how often your should feed an anemone to an end. We hope that we have been able to help you better understand that different anemones have different requirements making it problematic to stick to one feeding schedule. You should always be open to adapting your feeding schedule as required for your anemones, especially when you are new to keeping them but as you build up experience, you will often be able to set your own feeding schedules as needed.