Bleached gig advise?

geckoejon · Dec 4, 2014

Hello,

I picked up a bleached blue gig about 6 weeks ago. I treated with cipro and after a week put it into my dt. I have a couple of areas of concern....

First, it is not deflating, but it is not fully expanding either. It has been like this for the last 5 weeks since adding to the dt. It looks pretty much the same as when I picked it up. I'm kind of concerned about it not expanding though. Maybe I should lower the LEDs? I thought gigs liked very bright light. My other 2 gigs look great and are fully expanded.

Second, it is bleached. It has blue tips, but the flesh tentacles except for the tips are bleached and white. I'm assuming that it is because of a lack of zoo. Anyway to speed up the zoo recovery process or any other advise to help it recover? I tried feeding a couple weeks ago. It expelled the small piece of krill after a couple hours. I haven't tried since.

Any thoughts or advise?

Randy Holmes-Farley · Dec 4, 2014

Can you post a picture of it?

Trex · Dec 4, 2014

Are you acclimating it to your lights at all?

geckoejon · Dec 5, 2014

randy, here is a quick cell pic from this morning. it pretty much always looks like this. not fully inflated, but not deflated either....

trex, no, i didn't. i just lowered them to about half power. i have read that gig's can pretty much take a lot of light and love it. maybe i made the mistake of not acclimating the new gig to the led's? i hope it's that simple.

thoughts?

just fyi, a guy at a lfs just let me know he has a nice lemon yellow gig in stock. i'm going to check it out today

not sure if it's supposed to be yellow, or a partially bleached green.

Randy Holmes-Farley · Dec 5, 2014

If its mouth is not gaping, I would just let it be, except not blast it with a lot of light when it is bleached. So maybe shade it a bit for now.

Any chance the clown is bothering it a lot?

Trex · Dec 5, 2014

Think of a bleached anemone this way...

Say you live in Hawaii, you are outdoors all day long, have a great tan. You can spend 12 hours in the sun and not get burned. Now, spend a winter up in Alaska, with no sunlight. You are going to become pale (( bleached )).
All of a sudden you go back to Hawaii, if you went out in the sun for 12 hours (( sans sunscreen )) you would be a lobster. Now, if you covered up and wore sunscreen you could get used to all that sunlight again, and in time go back to being in the sun for 12 hours without burning.
Acclimating your anemone to your lights is like using sunscreen.

geckoejon · Dec 5, 2014

randy, yes, the clowns pester the mess out of the gigs. maybe this one doesn't like being messed with? i might try to find a basket to put over it temporarily. that would help with the clown issue and possibly block a little more light.

trex, great explanation / theory. makes perfect sense to me. i will crank the lights way back and ramp up slowly. i do that with my bta tank when i have new recruits. i thought gigs would take more light, so i didn't bother. my bad... i'm learning

Reefahholic · Dec 6, 2014

That gig is bleached but doing ok. It takes them quite a while to acclimate and get stabilized in a tank.

Make sure you keep your water clean and params on point.

Once he's stabilized and enjoying your tank, he regain his zoo.

This takes a long time. 3 months or more most of the time.

Good luck, he seems to be doing well.