Green BTA still brown and stringy

[cwk84]

Hey, I just don't know what to do anymore. I made my BTA look very sick with vodka dosing (only dosed 1ml) last year but I stopped hoping that it would recover. It's been a while now and it still looks bad. I keep doing water changes but it doesn't get better. Nitrates are always between 10-20ppm (I can't get them down even if I stop feeding) and phosphates hover somewhere around 0.11. All corals except the BTA seem to do well. My euphyllia split and look very colorful and happy, my mushrooms have split a couple times and even my birds nest is fully extended (the skeleton is just very dark red due to the nitrates). My tank is now over a year old and when I got the anemone my tank was practically new (I know that was a mistake but I was a newbie).

The picture where it's bubbly is from the first week where I got it. The other picture is from today.

 

[cwk84]

IMG-3832

• cwk84
• Mar 10, 2018

IMG-3251

• cwk84
• Mar 10, 2018

 

[Lance M.]

IMG-3832

• cwk84
• Mar 10, 2018

This is what it looks like now? I can't really tell anything good or bad. Can you get some clearer pictures?

 

[cwk84]

Sorry but my iPhone can't focus perfectly in that light. It's a little too blue I guess.

 

[potatocouch]

What's wrong with that BTA? Why do you say it looks 'Bad' ?

 

[Lance M.]

From the pictures, it looks fine. I do not see anything inherently wrong with it. They will change shape and coloration in different tanks, conditions, lighting, etc.

 

[cwk84]

Well, it's not inflated anymore and not bright green. Most of the time it's really small and not open at all. When I got it looked big and had a nice green/turquoise coloration. Once I started vodka dosing it shriveled up and turned dirty green/brown. It's been 2 months since my last dose of vodka.

 

[Lance M.]

By inflated, you mean the tentacles bubbled? Bubbles come and go. Stays all the time or never happens again. There's no known reason. It could vary on an individual level of what it takes for a specific bta to bubble up.

There appears to be nothing wrong with it.

You could try to get the nitrates down or change your lighting to see if you get a different response from it. Do you have a skimmer? Grow chaeto? other macroalgaes? Any info on your tank? Flow?

I looked back at your older thread. Did you ever end up adding bulbs to your fixture?

 

[davocean]

Yeah looks fine, normal.

 

[cwk84]

By inflated I mean the the disc is visible and the tentacles are long and thick.

I really don’t understand why you guys say it looks normal. When I got it it looked really nice and when I started dosing vodka it changed. When I look at BTA pictures online most of them are stringy but they look inflated and healthy. Mine is always half closed and the tentacles are short hin and stringy. The color might be due to too much nitrate and phosphate in the water but I can put up with that. I just want it to look happy.

 

[Lance M.]

Bta's will change shape and color in your tank after they acclimate from when you purchase them. This doesn't always happen, may be slight or may be drastic where it looks like a completely different nem.

The only things I can suggest would be altering your water parameters, flow, lighting, feeding. But be aware, it may just look like that regardless.