Recent ritteri pic - Page 2

Delphinus · #11 11-17-2003, 10:21 PM

In the picture he is probably about 24" from tentacle tip to tentacle tip, left to right. The tank is only 18" at the centre front-to-back so he does need to fold up a bit to fit. (I keep saying "he" .... I should clarify that I know he's a "he" because ... well maybe we shouldn't go there... He has spawned at least twice for me over the last year or two.

)

His foot is about 12" in diameter. He closes up a little at night. He's only about 6" or 8" tall.

I hardly ever see my clownfish except for fleeting glimpses.

Sean, I'd estimate he grew from 4" or 5" to approx. 18" within about 6 months or so. Since then the growth rate has slowed some, but he is definitely still growing. There is a definite correlation between growth and how much he eats. He does eat a lot, he is fed mysis daily or every second day. I found that throttling back how much he is fed, in an effort to control the growth rate, is not a good idea if I want to keep him healthy.

I have had him since about April or May 2001, so about 2.5 years now. I consider myself exceptionally lucky ('luck is with the dumb' as the saying goes). But believe me every little hiccup he might have produces a very nervous panic-attack in me.

I almost lost him when I had three BTA's in the same tank with him and some weird chemical battle started happening. One BTA and one ritteri, no problem. One BTA split and two BTA's and one ritteri, still no problem. Another BTA split so three BTA's and one ritteri, ... and within a week he started to decline. Stopped opening and started shrinking. Wasn't an obvious water quality issue, wasn't an obvious lack of feeding ... went through a number of different things and finally for lack of results I pulled the BTA's out and put them in the other tank; and he almost instantly started opening again and with feeding mysis he started regaining his strength again. I took away from this two lessons: 1) diffuse competition between anemones may not be a myth after all (Of course one isolated incident proves nothing, but it made me really think about it), and 2) mysis is dang good stuff. I should of course maybe mention that at the time it was a (cough cough) 50 gallon tank and now when I think about it, that seems like a bad idea from any perspective.

Anyways thanks for all the comments! I'm glad I can be able to share him a little with everyone.