Anemone shrienking in light

[merfury1989]

Hi folks, so this anemone of mine is acting very weird or I just don't know what's going on.

My anemone shrinks and becomes really small when lights are on, but extends and becomes bigger when it's dark.

Anyone can advice what's going on here? It's happening for 1 week now. I feed anemone twice a week.

Salinity 33
Temp 24.5
PH 8.1
Nitrate less than 2
Phosphate 0.03

* Considering the nitrate and Phosphate levels, my glass, rock, sand is covered with brown hair algae, so I don't really know what's wrong with parameters.

In pictures you can anemone in lights and dark, and also picture of tank in general showing all algae.

 

[Bucs20fan]

Well first, if it shrinks when the light is on, you may be giving it too much light, what lights are you running? I say that knowing that nems can typically take alot more light than you think, but it appears there is correlation here. Also, nems do need some nitrates, idk if your test can test under 2, but like corals, they need nitrates.

 

[laezur]

Hi! How old is your tank? You can keep an anemone successfully at most stages of the aquariums life with proper care, but they are much harder to keep when a tank is new and require some level of husbandry.

If your nutrients are showing as low, but you are seeing a lot of nuisance algae, it could be that you have high nutrients but they are being absorbed to feed the algae and that is why they test as low - so they are not TRULY low.

Regardless, you should have some level of Nitrate as the previous poster said. So I would suggest you actually have higher nitrates and phosphates that you think, they're just being used.

 

[merfury1989]

The tank is 1yr old. Its a 10G tank, with 2 BTAs and 1 RFA. Plus 1 Clownfish.
I feed fish once a day (9 pellets max), feed anemone twice a week.

Lights are HD AI Prime with very low intensity (pic attached)

 

[merfury1989]

So one bta looks like this (pic attached), and it's like that for 1hour now. Anything of concern?

 

[ThomasNanoReefer]

It does not look happy...

Your tank is 1 year old. How long do you have them in your tank?

 

[merfury1989]

Like 3 months now
It only started acting like that now

My water parameters are good, so I don't know whatsup with this one.

My other BTA is doing fine, my RFA is fine

 

[MischiefReef]

Didnt see anyone else mention this yet, but the anemone in the first set of pics looks extremely bleached. My guess is it has likely been stressed out due to some event and has expelled its zooxanthellae. It would need a more shaded spot and increased feedings to recover. I would maybe increase feedings by an extra 1 time per week.

 

[merfury1989]

I have reduced my lights as I cannot move the anemone, light intensity pic attached.

Also in terms of feeding, how do I do that when it doesn't eat, even when I try to feed it?

 

[MischiefReef]

Sorry, from your first post I was under the impression that the anemone was eating twice a week. If it’s not eating at all and it is that bleached, the outlook is not great as it means it is slowly starving and running out of energy. What do you normally try to feed with? And at what time of day?

 

[MischiefReef]

Also, what other livestock are in the tank? Sometimes anemones can get over hosted by clowns.

 

[merfury1989]

Just 2 BTA (including this one), 1 RFA, 1 GSP (small), 1 Fire Clown (who usually hosts the other BTA).

I feed them Vitalis Anemone Pellets.

 

[ThomasNanoReefer]

Do you own two tanks? Or is this the same tank in which you have posted problems with several corals (Torch, Digitata, Elegance Coral, Palythoa, ...)? What happened to them?

 

[merfury1989]

2 tanks.

Other one doesn't have anemones. And that tank is doing fine, except battling with nuisance algae

 

[MischiefReef]

Not sure from the descriptions what could be wrong. I know that when I had a pair of over active clown fish that they could either smother an anemone that was too small, or they would sometimes play favorites and only let one anemone eat, literally ripping food from the other three anemones to feed their favorite one. In the end was solved by removing the clowns to another tank with their favorite anemone. The other three were also ticked and had color loss but not full bleaching.

 

[merfury1989]

How do you spot feed anemone which has shrinked to a degree that if you put food, it will just float out.

 

[MischiefReef]

That can be a tough challenge, you could try using a cut off 2L bottle top and placing it over the anemone and then feeding a slurry and let it just sit as close as possible to the anemones mouth. Of course yours seems to be on a wall, so that makes things even more difficult. Maybe just a turkey baster and extreme patience to drip feed it when you see it open up. I’ve found that vitalis anemone pellets are extremely good at triggering a feeding response. The only down side is I guess they must taste pretty good to all your other tank inhabitants too, my fish, shrimp, crabs all go nuts when I feed anemone pellets and usually will try their best to rob any anemones or LPS I feed with it.

 

[MischiefReef]

Forgot to mention, turn off the pumps and power heads when trying to target feed such a weakened anemone.

 

[merfury1989]

So feeding every day is fine with this? Or twice a week etc?

 

[MischiefReef]

2-3 times a week.