Need Disease and Anemone Help

Tuffyyyyy · Jul 14, 2017

I've had a chromis in my tank for about a month and a half. A week or so ago I notice him and my larger clown have some white stringy poop. I hunted around on here and saw people suggest Seachem Metro + Focus. I've been treating with that as the label says. I got home from work today and saw the chromis was dead. Eyes were missing...looked like he had been decomposing a while which is weird because he seemed fine last night. Is there something else to get or do I keep up the seachem treatment?

Next question is about anemones. I got 2 green BTAs delivered last Saturday and acclimated them. The bigger of the two (2nd picture) stuck to a rock and moved around before finding a cave in the back of the tank. It hasn't bubbled up or anything and I'm not sure what to do. The clowns have already been getting acquainted with it and I've been target feeding, but it still looks on the verge of death.

The smaller BTA (1st picture) is in even worse shape. I put it into my IM10 to grow it out. It moved under a rock before detaching completely. I freaked out and put it into my IM40. It attached to a rock but was detached and hanging in the sand when I got home. Once the power head went back on it got blown to the other side of the rock and stuck. Is it doomed? What do I do?

Sorry for the wall of text. Tank is an IM40 that's been up for 6 months. All parameters are normal (0) except I have high nitrates (20-40). Lights are a 24" 4-bulb T5 fixture with all ATI bulbs. Lights are on 6 hour cycles with 4 hours of overlap (on at 2pm and off at 10pm). Corals are all doing great just concerned with my fish and anemone.

melypr1985 · Jul 14, 2017

So you are feeding the metroplex and focus in their food? how much metro, focus and food are you using to make the their medicated food? How often are you feeding it? Do you have any other fish and are any of them exhibiting symptoms besides white stringy poop?

Tuffyyyyy · Jul 14, 2017

I am doing the metro as described. 3 scoops every other day (guessing I have 25-30g of water volume in the IM40). I've done that 3 times.

The focus I haven't been as accurate on. I usually feed 1/2 cube of frozen food every other day but have fed every day for the past 3 days. Tonight is the first time I actually observed the 5:1 focus to food flake ratio. I intend to do that going forward, mixing between flake and frozen.

I now have 2 clowns and a flame hawk. Everyone is behaving normally, but I thought the same about the chromis before it died. I haven't seen any white stringy poop from any of them other than the bigger clown. But even then I can't recall seeing it on her since I first saw it about a week ago.

GHsaltie · Jul 15, 2017

You have to mix the metro and focus into the food. 1 scoop of each to a tablespoon of food and feed that once a day for 14 days. Feeding the metro is more effective for internal parasites as the medicine goes right to the source of the problem. It sounds like the chromis was chewed on after he passed, not uncommon for that to happen. As for the anemones, well I'm still trying to figure mine out so I'll leave that to the more knowledgeable ones. I do know that they can be super finicky. Might be a good idea to cover the powerhead with some pantyhose though in case someone decides to drift.

aykwm · Jul 15, 2017

You want to feed the medication by mixing metroplex with focus in food and using a liquid so they mix properly (rodi/garlicguard/selcon, etc..). Since you are doing it in a reef tank, I suggest running carbon in case some medications leach to the water as antibiotics are not reef safe.

For anemones, I suggest placing another thread in the respective forums for better exposure so that the experts can look at it, but my opinion is that they are not receiving enough light. I know that anemones usually love bright light and most of the time are placed in the middle or the top.

4FordFamily · Jul 15, 2017

aykwm said:
You want to feed the medication by mixing metroplex with focus in food and using a liquid so they mix properly (rodi/garlicguard/selcon, etc..). Since you are doing it in a reef tank, I suggest running carbon in case some medications leach to the water as antibiotics are not reef safe.

For anemones, I suggest placing another thread in the respective forums for better exposure so that the experts can look at it, but my opinion is that they are not receiving enough light. I know that anemones usually love bright light and most of the time are placed in the middle or the top.

This is pretty much exactly what I was going to say. Sorry for your loss. To answer your previous question, op-- I would continue treatment because if one fish has internal parasites they all most likely do. Make sure you finish the course

Good luck!