RBTA With Black Balls Inside It

Marine Iguana · Jan 12, 2015

Hey guys, I came home today to find that the RBTA I've had in my 75 for nearly 2 years now has black balls inside of it's body, like, visible in the tentacles and disk. They are spherical, and about the NLS 1mm pellets that I feed on occasion. The anemone is also lighter than usual, not bleached, but not the rich colors it usually is. I am honestly quite baffled by this, I doń know if it's something I should be concerned about or not. The balls are also not stationary, they appear to be mobile and will loosely drift about inside the tentacles as the anemone sways in the current. Have any of you experienced this before, I would love some insight. Thanks!!!

Tank parameters:
2 1/2 year old tank, custom LEDs, Koralia 220 SuperSkim, jebao wp40 for flow
Livestock- Yellow Tang, Maroon Clown pair, PJ Cardinal pair, Yellow Coris Wrasse, Quartet of Chromis
Nitrate- 0ppm
Ammonia- 0ppm
Phosphate- 0.02 ppm
Calcium- 430ppm
Alk- 7dkh
pH- 7.8

Marine Iguana · Jan 12, 2015

Here's another picture showing just how many there are, it is quite blurry though so I apologize.

hatrix11 · Dec 16, 2015

Just came across this. What's the latest update?

chelltom · Dec 17, 2015

yeah that is strange would like to know what was the outcome

Marine Iguana · Dec 18, 2015

Hey all, I'll give you an update as to the outcome, maybe it will help somebody in the future. I'm still not sure as to what caused the RBTA to grow these black balls, but over the course of a week or so they really didn't chance, anemone appeared to be fine otherwise. They gradually started to lessen in numbers over the course of 2 weeks, and then roughly 3 weeks after the RBTA split into four separate anemones. One withered away and perished, but the other three are going strong to this day. So a happy ending to this mystery, hope that some day I might have an explanation as to what occurred.

erk · Dec 18, 2015

I think I read in another thread that these might be eggs.

Marine Iguana · Dec 18, 2015

I could definitely see them as being eggs looking back at it now, if they were I would have expected them to all be expelled at once but I guess that wouldn't be necessarily needed.