Anemones loosing tentacles and fading away

[maroun.c]

A friends tank was literally filled with BTAs most of which split in the system. All doing great since years till few month back where they starting losing the tentacles as in pics and dying off.
No major changes to the system expect the shift from old AI to radions. As the lights were old the max intensity of the radions was set to 60 percent with a 4 week acclimation and anemones did well during acclamation and for weeks after till this started. Currently doing water changes and carbon to manage the die off from the anemones, he also reduced light to 40 percent and still no change

 

[Crabs McJones]

I'm not expert by any means, but I was always under the impression that when a nem looses or shrinks their tentacles like this it means they're starving and are consuming themselves to stay alive. Do you know if they used a par meter to check that the nems are receiving the same amount of par that they were getting with the AI's. And why the changeover? If everything was doing great under the AI why did they make the change?

 

[maroun.c]

AIs were very very old and light output decreased big time. He only added 3 or 4 radions vs the 6-7 AIs he had and the tank was brighter with those hence the one month acclimation and running only at 60 percent.
I doubt it's the light change as some lower BTAs were affected and some up as well and some weren't affected at all yet. As they are most clones you would expect a similar reaction to ligh. Also anemones would bleach if exposed to brighter light and they usually bleach very fast which wasnt the case.

 

[vetteguy53081]

Sounds like a combination of lack of food and Too bright of lighting.
20% white and 75% blue. feed mysis shrimp or small krill.

Also if they were pried off rock- how were they removed?

 

[vetteguy53081]

One other thought too- Do you have any shrimp in your tank? Skunk cleaner shrimp and Peppermint shrimp have been known to strip tentacles off anemones

 

[maroun.c]

Sounds like a combination of lack of food and Too bright of lighting.
20% white and 75% blue. feed mysis shrimp or small krill.

Also if they were pried off rock- how were they removed?

They weren't removed they are still in the same tank only lights were changed.

 

[maroun.c]

One other thought too- Do you have any shrimp in your tank? Skunk cleaner shrimp and Peppermint shrimp have been known to strip tentacles off anemones

Not sure if he has any but he had close to 100 BTA in his tank so doubt shrimps would do so much damage on so many btas.
Anemones are still in his tank just posting for him.

 

[maroun.c]

Confirmed no shrimps. He did add a few small anemone crabs but I doubt t those would do any damage to anemones.

 

[pga7602]

Are they all the same bta strain?

 

[maroun.c]

Most are as they were splitting for 4-5 years but he has a few different ones and added 7-8 new BTAs lately one of them was a big nice pink one which he lost as well. He also has 2-3 haddonis

 

[User1]

RBTA's or BTA's in general get positive feedback for easy to keep, etc but I've personally found they do not like sudden changes. Changing lights is sudden. Changing tanks is sudden. Water chemistry "can" be sudden. I say this has being in a similar position in which case I have many RBTA's from the main source which is over 7 years old. Started with 1 and peaked at 8 or 9 in my 40 breeder which just because too full so upgraded last year to a 210 gallon tank.

My point is at the time of the upgrade I believe I was at 11 total after giving some away. First two or three weeks after the upgrade everything was fine. However, as the weeks went by the RBTA's started to shrink, move around a lot more, get even smaller with only a handful looking anything like they did before. I couldn't understand why that is since similar water chemistry. I started to then start mapping it out. In my case it was:

Larger tank.
New rock (150 lbs dry pukani)
Different lighting (both DIY but added more with different spectrum)

In my case I believe the Pukani rock leached more phosphates than what the BTA's liked. I also think the light spectrum changed and they didn't like that. Even though I lowered the intensity for adjustment / acclimation I think the spectrum played a part. And lastly while the tank was fully cycled (Feb - April 2018 before I consolidated tanks on April 15th 2018) it is only now 13 or so months later that most of the anemones are looking like they used to which I circle back in my case rock and tank maturity.

Maturity isn't the case here but the lighting change seems suspect. That was part of my equation and I do believe it impacted them. I have no other answer in my case has to why a 7 year old RBTA would die off so suddenly otherwise. One thing other than adjust my lighting was to feed directly both reef roids (once a week) and mysis or brine shrimp.

I've heard smaller particle foods are easier to digest and they use less energy to do so. Thus the reef roid and mysis shrimp use. Stay away from silversides at all cost or larger pieces of shrimp.

 

[jordan9095]

Most are as they were splitting for 4-5 years but he has a few different ones and added 7-8 new BTAs lately one of them was a big nice pink one which he lost as well. He also has 2-3 haddonis

some BTAs don't play nice with others.

 

[Meccaman96]

Chemical warefare from the new nems