TankBud

One species · 4 varieties

Bubble tip anemone

Entacmaea quadricolor

Also known as BTA, Bulb Tentacle Anemone

SaltwaterAnemone

Bubble tip anemone (Entacmaea quadricolor)
Nhobgood Nick Hobgood · CC BY-SA 3.0

Care at a glance

Temperature
75–81°F
24–27°C
pH
8.1–8.4
Adult size
11.8 in
30 cm
Minimum tank
30 gal
115 L
Temperament
Peaceful
Social behavior
Solitary
Swim level
Bottom
Difficulty
Medium
Breeding
Medium
Rarity
Very common
Reef safe
Reef safe with caution
Family
Actiniidae
Origin
Indo-Pacific reefs

Pick a variety

One setup covers every line on this page: care is the species' care.

Overview

Give it strong reef lighting (LED, T5, or metal halide) and moderate flow that does not blast it directly. It will take chopped shrimp, fish, or silverside a couple of times a week from a target feeder, on top of what it makes from its zooxanthellae. Like every true anemone it can walk around the tank on its pedal disc, so shield powerhead and overflow intakes and give it distance from corals it could sting on the way past. Naturally it hosts maroon, tomato, cinnamon, and clark's clownfish; captive bred ocellaris and percula, whose natural hosts are harder to find in the trade, will often adopt one just as readily. Drip acclimate it slowly and only add it to a tank that has been running for several months with stable, mature water.

In the wild

Found throughout the Indo-Pacific from the Red Sea to Samoa, usually with its base wedged into a crevice in the reef or nestled among the branches of an Acropora or Seriatopora coral head, from a few feet down to over 30 m. In the aquarium it wants a spot on the lower to mid rockwork under strong light, with room to expand and eventually split. It is the most widely kept host anemone in the hobby and the easiest one to pair with a clownfish.

Good to know

Entacmaea quadricolor is Latin for four colored, a nod to how the column, tentacles, tentacle tips, and mouth can each show a different hue. Like other anemones it hosts photosynthetic zooxanthellae in its tissue and gets most of its energy from them. The bulbous swellings that give the bubble tip its name are thought to help pack in extra algae, though they can shrink or disappear under lower light. It reproduces readily by longitudinal fission, splitting down the middle into two genetically identical anemones.

Did you know

A single well fed bubble tip anemone can split into a small colony of genetically identical clones within a year or two, which is why aquaculture farms propagate BTAs for the trade instead of collecting them from the wild the way most other host anemones still are.

Other named lines

Color strains of Entacmaea quadricolor, spread by splitting rather than breeding. Color does not change care, and every strain hosts clownfish the same way.

Black Widow
deep red with a high-contrast dark sheen
Colorado Sunburst
intense orange glow strain
Watermelon
pink body with green tips

Symbiotic relationships

Clownfish and their host anemones

A clownfish lives inside an anemone that stings and eats other fish its size. Its mucus coat keeps the anemone's stinging cells from firing, and a new fish builds that protection up over hours of brief touches. The fish gets a refuge no predator will follow it into and a nest site at the anemone's base. The anemone gets a guard that drives off the butterflyfish that would graze its tentacles, a steady supply of nitrogen from the fish's waste, and water movement at night, when the fish fans its fins among the tentacles and the anemone takes up more oxygen. Only ten anemone species host clownfish in the wild, and each clownfish species uses its own short list of them.

Captive-bred clownfish have never seen an anemone and do not need one; they settle for a coral, a powerhead or a corner of the tank. If you want the pairing, the anemone is the harder animal by far and goes in first, into a mature tank with strong light and stable water, at the tank size its own profile lists. The bubble tip anemone is the hardy host, and the one most clownfish accept in captivity even when it is not a natural host, so a clownfish profile lists it as the usual tank host where that is the case. The sebae, magnificent and carpet anemones are marked difficult, and the carpets eat fish. Expect a paired clownfish to defend its anemone against everything else in the tank.

Shrimp and crabs that live in anemones

Several small crustaceans live where almost nothing else can: among the tentacles of an anemone. Sexy shrimp perch in the tentacles in a cluster, bobbing their tails in the display that named them. The white-spot anemone shrimp is near transparent apart from its spots and lives on carpet anemones. The porcelain anemone crab sits at the anemone's edge and filters plankton from the water with two fan-like arms. Pederson's cleaner shrimp lives in the Caribbean corkscrew anemone and cleans fish from there. In every case the anemone is a bodyguard: its sting keeps off the small fish that would eat the shrimp. The anemone gains little, and the white-spot shrimp will nibble its host's tentacles when it is hungry.

Give each of them its anemone. Sexy shrimp take a rock flower anemone, a bubble tip or a carpet. The white-spot shrimp and the porcelain crab want a carpet anemone or a long tentacle anemone, both of which need a mature tank at the tank size their profiles list. Pederson's shrimp wants a corkscrew anemone or a condy. Without a host they perch on a coral or hide in the rock and are picked off by any fish that eats shrimp, so they suit a peaceful nano reef. A clownfish will evict them from an anemone it has claimed.

Every symbiotic relationship in the catalog

Common questions

What size tank does a Bubble tip anemone need?

A Bubble tip anemone needs at least 30 gal (115 L). It spends most of its time in the bottom.

What temperature and pH does a Bubble tip anemone need?

A Bubble tip anemone is comfortable at 75–81°F (24–27°C) with a pH of 8.1–8.4.

How big does a Bubble tip anemone get?

An adult Bubble tip anemone reaches about 11.8 in (30 cm).

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