If you want to add your own custom animations to UITableView cells, use
[theTableView reloadData];
[theTableView layoutSubviews];
NSArray* visibleViews = [theTableView visibleCells];
to get an array of visible cells. Then add any custom animation to each cell.
Check out this gist I posted for a smooth custom cell animation. https://gist.github.com/floprr/1b7a58e4a18449d962bd