Need advice on bleaching RBTA

Trey302 · Aug 14, 2017

I've had this anemone for a little over a month and I'm pretty sure it was starting to bleach. Bought it from Petco so it obviously wasn't under good lighting and put it in my tank with an AP700 that was at around 30% at the time. It's my first anemone so I guess I was more worried about it not getting enough light and did not adjust my light settings. It settled in nicely and stayed exactly where I put it. After about a week it would shrivel up right before the lights were set to go out and spew out brown stringy stuff. The first time it happened was the day after I fed it for the first time so I just thought maybe it was expelling waste. After it did it a couple more times I figured out there might be something wrong. What reading I've done it seems that I did not properly acclimate it to my light and it was starting to bleach. Since then I've raised my light a couple inches and reduced my intensity down to 15% max. I also put the major diffusion covers back on to cut back the light even more. So far it seems to be responding well and looks pretty healthy throughout the day. Some times it will still shrivel up at night but the next morning it's back to looking pretty good.

So as long as my suspicions are correct as to what's wrong, I'm looking for advice as to how to get this guy back completely healthy. I'm obviously planning to leave my lights low for a while and I've been feeding him mysis shrimp at least every other day since he's not getting much light. Anything else I can do? How long before I should start increasing the lighting intensity?

I'm hoping since he's eating well and hasn't tried to move around the tank I have a pretty good chance at getting him healthy again. Just wanted to make sure I'm on the right track and not missing anything.

Ph - 8.3
Salinity - 1.026
Alk - 9.4
Cal - 430
Mag - 1430
Nitrates and Phosphates are undetectable
Alk & Cal are dosed daily via DOS so parameters stay pretty consistent

CodyRVA · Aug 14, 2017

Looks pretty healthy to me. It's not uncommon for them to deflate when the lights go down or shortly after/before on a regular basis. Expelling waste is a normal thing as well. The more they eat the more waste they will expel. Unless it starts moving around a lot or starts to fade/lose color I wouldn't worry too much. Just make sure you feed it small bits of food as you mentioned, mysis, vs silversides (much easier to digest).

njtiger aquariums · Aug 14, 2017

CodyRVA said:
Looks pretty healthy to me. It's not uncommon for them to deflate when the lights go down or shortly after/before on a regular basis. Expelling waste is a normal thing as well. The more they eat the more waste they will expel. Unless it starts moving around a lot or starts to fade/lose color I wouldn't worry too much. Just make sure you feed it small bits of food as you mentioned, mysis, vs silversides (much easier to digest).

Agree looks good to me.

Trey302 · Aug 14, 2017

CodyRVA said:
Looks pretty healthy to me. It's not uncommon for them to deflate when the lights go down or shortly after/before on a regular basis. Expelling waste is a normal thing as well. The more they eat the more waste they will expel. Unless it starts moving around a lot or starts to fade/lose color I wouldn't worry too much. Just make sure you feed it small bits of food as you mentioned, mysis, vs silversides (much easier to digest).

Thanks! I've read conflicting info on whether it's just waste coming out or if it's actually expelling some of it's zooxanthellae because it was receiving too much light. The overall color is still pretty good but it has seemed to definitely lighten up around it's mouth area which is why I'm concerned. The picture I posted is a little on the dark side so the actual color of the anemone isn't quite as good as the picture shows it to be.