HELP! My anemone doesn't seem well!

Dixiegirl

New Member
Hello I am new to having a salt water tank and had some fish in the tank doing great for about a week. I recently added two clownfish and an anemone. Everybody was doing great until last night I noticed the tenticles on my anemone were starting to shrivel as well as a ball of brine shrimp (which is what I feed everybody) pooching out of its mouth. I read online that anemones shrink sometimes when expelling food. This morning before I went to work it was shriveled up even more but still attached to the rock. Well when I got home it had detached and floated behind the rock on the sand. It was still shriveled but in a disk shape. I touched the tenticles and they were very unresponsive but still sticky. So I moved it on top the rock and after a while it pulled its tenticles almost inside itself. Please help me save the poor little guy!
 

DaveK

Well-Known Member
An anemone requires a well established tank, excellent water quality and excellent lighting. This means that the tank should be running for about a year, and not have any serious issues for many months.

Anemones go through times where they will retract for a day, but from what your describing, it sounds like the anemone is on it's way out. I don't hold out much hope, but once and awhile you get lucky and it will recover. There isn't much you can do except keep an eye on it. If it starts to decay, or it looks like it's giving off "white smoke" it's dead, snd should be removed at once.

You should also test your water parameters, especially ammonia and nitrite. A spike in eithere of these usually indicates something is dead in the system.

As an additional note. Brine shrimp is not a very good food for your fish and other livestock. It has very little nutritional value. It's great for getting a fish to start to eat, but once that happens, switch to other foods.
 

Uncle99

Well-Known Member
Nem require stable water chemistry usually associated with tank mature at least one year.

It’s not as much as the levels you keep, nems tolerate highs and lows, just hate change.

Treat like corals, the least flux possible leads to long term survival.
 
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