Anemone Issues

I'm having some issues keeping my Anemone's alive. I have a 29 gallon tank with 4 fish (2 perculas, bi-color angel and a sixline wrasse) My params are great. (ammonia 0, nitrates < 5 and nitrites 0). my Lighting is a Kessil 360a and the tank stays at 75 degrees. So far I tried a bubble tip first and it lasted about a week and wasted away. I waited 3 weeks, constantly checking the parameters to see if any fluctuation happen and everything looked stable (the tank has been running for 4 years btw). I went ahead and bought a cheap pink tip before i fork out the money for a new bubble and he lasted about 3 weeks until he started to shrivel up. Now I have NOT been spot feeding. I dont know if they're starving but I find that hard to believe after only a couple weeks. Any help would be appreciated. Oh and this tank is a bare bottom tank (no sand bed). I've included a picture of the tank when the anemone was alive for reference.
 

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nanoreefing4fun

Well-Known Member
RS STAFF
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to ReefSanctuary, a real Sanctuary of reef forums, with lots of very nice members


Start a tank thread & share your tank with us so we can follow along, we love pics :dance:

Hopefully some can advise on the nem

here one good read...
http://www.karensroseanemones.net/

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StevesLEDs

RS Sponsor
Hi Matthew,
Do you happen to have phosphate test results handy? I have found that when dealing with anemones, water quality is the #1 issue, and the #2 issue is poor lighting (wrong spectrum or not enough intensity).

Also, he may not be getting enough light down there at the bottom, especially since those Kenya's are collecting most of the light, casting shadows everywhere else. Perhaps relocating the Kenya's to the bottom will allow for more light elsewhere - they don't really need that much light at all, in fact, seeing that they are thriving that close to the water surface makes me thing there isn't enough light intensity.

Also, judging by how the mushroom softies are opening up near the top of the aquarium, this is indicative that the lighting may not be bright enough. Shrooms usually don't like a lot of light and get smaller when they are receiving too much light - in that case it means the light is bright enough for higher light requirement corals and anemones. Anemones love terrifically bright light, so if your Kessil is not turned up all the way, go ahead and slowly increase the brightness to its max setting, I doubt you can get that fixture to be too bright.

Let us know what happens.

Jeff
 
Jeff,

Right now the light is sitting at 70% intensity so its not at its brightest setting. I had a friend of my test my water and he told me the phosphates were very low ( not sure on the exact reading). Do you think the Kessil is powerful enough for an anemone? All of my fellow reefers with them tell me the 360 on a 29 is over kill, that the light apart from the radeons are one of the best on the market. I only recently switched to this lite about a month and a half ago, i was using t5's. I can bring up the intensity and also trim some of those kenyas up to see if that helps. Would this lighting issue cause the Anemone to die that quick? I also thought perhaps it was too intense for the anemone because the LFS i got it from uses a single T5 bulb for the tank. (the light is an a360w Tuna Blue) i had this wrong in the description .

Thanks,

Matthew
 

StevesLEDs

RS Sponsor
I'm not sure I've every heard of someone providing too much light for an anemone. I have a custom 126W fixture over my BC29 and it is at full power. My GBTA seems to like it just fine. Even looking in that aquarium for more than 10 seconds hurts my eyes, it is brighter than sunlight.

How often and much are your water changes?

Jeff
 
I'm not sure I've every heard of someone providing too much light for an anemone. I have a custom 126W fixture over my BC29 and it is at full power. My GBTA seems to like it just fine. Even looking in that aquarium for more than 10 seconds hurts my eyes, it is brighter than sunlight.

How often and much are your water changes?

Jeff

I do a 20% change bi-weekly.
 

StevesLEDs

RS Sponsor
20% biweekly is a lot. I do ~15% once a month, but I dose and use a skimmer. Nonetheless, that is ample. It leaves pretty much nothing else except the lighting. Go ahead and increase the intensity, remember to acclimate slowly, over the course of a few weeks.

Jeff
 

DaveK

Well-Known Member
I see several possible issues with the op's system.

Looking at the picture, the tank looks very dim, although that may be because that's just how the picture came out. With leds you do get good light, but they tend to direct the light straight down. This can lead to some areas of the tank being very dim. You may also have an issue because your other soft corals are shading the anemone. All that being said, I don't think lighting is a problem. Long term you need it, but it's not going to kill an anemone in only a few weeks.

I'd be looking at these issues...

Poor quality anemone when you got it. Many might look good, but they are easy to damage if the dealer, or shipper or anyone else in the chain doesn't handle them carefully.

Anemones need a long acclimation. Figure a minimum of twice as long compared to a fisH

You do need to target feed anemones, but only about once a week, so this is not likely your problem.

Low general water quality. I believe this to be your problem. By low water quality, I mean the system is keeping the water good enough to sustain the fish and soft corals, but not enough to keep an anemone. Anemones require really high quality water.

A 29 gal tank is only going to hold about 20 + gallons of water by the time you add live rock. By the time you add 4 fish, you are running about double the fish load you should have in a tank that size. You may also not have good enough filtration. What kind of filtration system do you use? What kind of skimmer do you run?

To check water quality for livestock like corals and anemones, in addition to the standard parameters pH, ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate, you should also test for calcium, alkalinity, phosphate, and magnesium. Getting the calcium / alkalinity balance correct is important for anemones, and get be a little tricky to get right.

Also test your new SW right after it's mixed, it may show more problems.
 
I'm running a 2 gallon hob refuge packed with macro algae along with a reef octopus bh-50 for skimming. I do dose with some purple up only about half the recommended dose. I have feared it may be overloaded. I did only have the two clowns but when my 55 cracked I saved the bicolor and the 6 line. Gave the rest of it away.
 

DaveK

Well-Known Member
I'm running a 2 gallon hob refuge packed with macro algae along with a reef octopus bh-50 for skimming. I do dose with some purple up only about half the recommended dose. I have feared it may be overloaded. I did only have the two clowns but when my 55 cracked I saved the bicolor and the 6 line. Gave the rest of it away.

The hob refugium could also be a big part of the problem. Many times these are not setup correctly and fed water by a small pump in the main display tank. This can cause the refugium to become a massive dirt trap. It's even worse if it's also a mud refugium.

I would discontinue the use of purple up. If the tank is set up properly, you'll get plenty of purple coraline algae. At that point you'll find out that coraline is just another problem algae. It's a mess to remove from equipment. It just looks a bit better.
 
I did increase the size of the pump it came with. I do not use mud, I have a couple handfuls of liverock along with the cheato algae. I will discontinue the purple up. At the moment that fuge is PACKED with the algae should I be trimming this up? Would it increase the Nitrate consumption?
 

jaws789832

Member
Hi Mathew and welcome.
I don't claim to be an expert by any means but our tanks are about the same size and I have kept an anemone for about a year now with no issues. Couple of observations on mine.....
When I first got him he was about the size of a half dollar. Since he was attached to a rock I had no choice but to position him at the bottom of my tank. After about a month he migrated up to the highest part of my tank and in an area that has a higher flow. That leads me to believe they like high light and high flow. I also started feeding him live black worms about 3 times a week(same times I feed my fish the black worms). When I first started doing this he would poop about once a week (which was quite nasty) but now I haven't seen him do this in a long time. He will usually let me know when he is hungry by me sticking a pipette in the vicinity of him. If he is hungry he will reach out and actually grab the pipette and I will just squirt some worms at his tentacles, which he grabs and pulls to his mouth. If he isn't hungry he will retract and I carry on with feeding the fish. In the years time that I have had him he grew to about the size of a cantelope, then split about a month ago so I have 2 about the size of baseballs now. Basically to sum it all up I think good water quality, high intensity lighting (mine is a custom built LED, Higher output than the stock expert nano cube but I cant remember exactly what I put in it) good water flow and target feeding are the keys for them. Or maybe I have just been extremely lucky LOL. Anyways Hope you have better luck with yours as I think they are one of the most interesting creatures in my tank.

On a side note I keep my refrugium about half full of cheato. Everytime I do a water change I pull some out to keep it about half full. I store the pulled out stuff in a different tank to take to my LFS for store credit. I don't know it this is right but my logic is it keeps good flow around the cheato and gives it plenty of room to grow which would (in theory) consume more nitrates
 
I'll go ahead and remove some of my macro algae to see if that does anything, also i'm going to buy another test kit and test again to make sure my kit isnt flawed. Where do you find live black worms? I've always heard if you have bad water quality you'll see it in kenya tree's because they'll shrivel up and act weird. I hope its not my lighting, that thing ran me $400 and I dont have the cash right now for anything else.
 
I did want to add, I have a coral banded shrimp. are these guys known to pick on Anemone's and kill them? I'm thinking he may be what's causing the issues.
 

jaws789832

Member
I buy my blackworms at aquaticfoods.com. I have a couple of the keepers and they work well if you want to keep them in the refrigerator. they will only last about 2 months doing it that way. I have a little 5 gallon tank that I set up to raise them in and they last about 6 months for 1/2 lbs. they actually would last forever but they don't reproduce fast enough for my feeding regiment. I don't know about the shrimp but I wouldn't think so. Its usually the anemone doing the killing. Mine have killed off about 3 of my corals
 

reefer gladness

Well-Known Member
Some good observations and advice made so far. First thing I will add is the nem in your picture appears to be a blue-tipped sebae (Heteractis crispa), not a bubble-tip. Sebae nem's are much harder to acclimate and require a very mature, stable aquarium.

Make sure you get proper ID before your next purchase. If the LFS was keeping any kind of nem under a single T5 they're not knowledgeable about nems and likely was not in the best of health upon purchase.

Your light should be fine for a bubble-tip, photography is tricky with LED's. If the nem wants more light it will move closer. Seeing your nem on the bottom tells me it wasn't the light. Trimming the kenyas isn't a bad idea but if the nem wants that spot it will go up and compete for it. If you have a healthy nem move to the top of the tank then you can slowly (over 1 month) increase intensity from 75 to 100%

I feed my nems once a month if they're lucky, and I remember. Usually they aren't that lucky. After keeping them for years I notice them puff up a little more after a good feeding but honestly they don't require much if they're hosting some clownfish. I don't think it was feeding in such a short period of time.

Acclimation is very important and while all those trace elements are important I'm most concerned with salinity, alkalinity and temp with nems. A long, slow drip acclimation is needed, 1 to 1 1/2 hours although some people drip up to 4 hours.
 
The LFS i have here isnt the best but its the only one i have within a 2 hour radius. My first anemone was a bubble tipped that passed. The LFS told me this was a pink tip or a (condy) anemone and was only $9 so I wanted to see if I'd have the same effect on this that I did the bubbletip and unfortunately It did. He lasted about 2 weeks and perished. What was unusual about the deaths is they didnt slowly wither away and die. One day they looked quite healthy and the next day they were completely compact turning basically inside out. That's why im thinking I may have an internal item causing this, perhaps a worm of some kind at night or that coral banded shrimp. this is only my guess based on what I know of the hobby, I really appreciate the advice you guys are giving.
 

Desmond

Well-Known Member
Hey as stated above water conditions need to be high.Your tank is more than long enough up to keep anemone as you said 4 years , they can die fast if the tank is not mature enough so i dont think is your issue. Is your salinity stable ? Do you top the tank up yourself or have an auto top up on the tank. My marine store said that salinity swings will kill a nem faster than anything. I dont believe your light is the problem as the nem would have moved to a place where it was happy.Also your banded shrimp would not cause the death of it more it would irate it. I would be more worried about your angel fish as they are know to nip at sessile invertebrates (Anemone) this is why they say with caution in a reef.Also if the foot of an anemone is damaged they dont last long.They also like a good flow in the tank as it helps exchange needed elements and rid the anemone of waste products.Did your marine store take the anemone of a rock or glass when you got it as they can be damaged very easily on there foot which will most always end in death.Also has the Anemone been bleached ? This can take away the zooxanthellae which it uses to feed off the light. Hope you figure out the issue as it sucks when you lose something in the tank. I would keep an eye on that angel for sure.
 
I top off manually, i marked a line on my tank that I know when it gets to its time to top off with a container marked with the exact amount to put in. keeps the salinity stable. I've kept an eye on the angel with no issues. Now I know my flow isnt the best. I had a couple nice power heads but they took a crap on me so i'm now using 2 cheap ones from walmart which isnt doing near enough. I just got married last week so I dont have the funds for new ones quite yet. The one I got came from an online vendor so i'm not sure if they hurt the foot or not. The one I picked up from my LFS they did peel him from the glass so its quite possible they may have hurt him.
 
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