What Do Sea Anemones Eat?

Sea anemones are often confused with ocean plants. Make no mistake -- these beautiful creatures are meat-eating predators. Although they spend most of their lives attached to the same rock, they can move but only about 3 to 4 inches per hour. Their diet is basic for an ocean-dwelling creature -- it includes, fish, mollusks and zooplankton.

  1. Capturing Food

    • More than 1,000 species of sea anemones inhabit our oceans. Sea anemones, which come in many shapes, sizes and colors, do not move very much at all. In order to eat, they patiently wait for their prey to swim by. They catch food with their tentacles, which have poisonous stingers, called nematocysts, and shove it into their mouths, located in the center of the tentacles.

    Fish and Mollusks

    • A sea anemone's diet includes small fish and mollusks. Many fish serve as treats for the meat-loving sea anemone. Mollusks with hard shells, such as mussels, clams and oysters are often eaten so that the anemone can attach itself to the shell. By contrast, anemones themselves have very few predators -- only the gray sea slug and the tompot blenny, a medium-sized orange-brown fish.

    Isopods, Amphipods and Plankton

    • Isopods, small creatures with an oval body and seven pairs of legs, amphipods, small shrimp-like animals, and zooplankton, also known as copepods, all travel along the ocean floor. They are extremely small, and there are billions of them passing by the tentacles of sea anemones all day long. Sea anemones commonly sting and eat these small creatures.

    Clown Fish

    • The sea anemone has a symbiotic relationship with the clown fish of the family Pomacentridae. Clown fish, of which there are 28 species, are immune to the poison of anemones. Clown fish spend their time swimming around and among the tentacles of sea anemones, eating their leftover and discarded food. Clown fish help anemones by cleaning them while the anemones protect the clown fish from predators and provide them with food.