Hello everyone, stumbled upon this forum when searching for help with my RBTA. So here's the deal, my fiancee and purchased our first anemone from a very reputable LFS. Well, not so local.. they're 2 hours from us. Anyway, we've had our anemone for 8 days now and think we may have an issue. Pardon the long post but I know you'll have certain questions and I want to cover most of them just to get it out of the way. Here is the situation from start to finish: Floated nem for 20 minutes. Released it with store water into 5 gallon bucket that we use for acclimating our saltwater fish. We then drip acclimated (about 1 drop a second) for an hour and a half. Upon finishing, released the nem into our tank with the power heads off. Once it appeared the foot had a good grip we turned one power head on and a half hour later turned the second one on. This seemed to be too much flow for it and it began to walk so we turned one power head off as it was starting to get swept away. It eventually settled onto the other side of the tank between a piece of live rock and the glass, it's foot in the sand while the sides are stuck to both the glass and the rock when fully inflated (Our RBTA is fairly large as well). We have kept the second power head off and opted to purchase a less intense set. So the second day it looked gorgeous and happy..tips bubbled, mouth closed etc. This is also the day one of our ocellaris clowns started to host it. It would close up a bit at night which i've heard is normal but correct me if i'm mistaken. So the afternoon of the third day (we feed it a few small pieces of mysis shrimp in the morning), the anemone shrunk down, pulling inward and started spitting out a long brown string - i've read mixed thoughts on this so wasn't immediately alarmed but monitored it closely. 10 minutes later it was back to it's old self, what i call "the happy look". We did a water change that evening as scheduled. It remained "happy" until yesterday (day 7). It closed up spitting that stringy dark stuff out twice yesterday. I tested the water and the results were... 1.026 salinity, 8.2pH, 0ppm ammonia, 0ppm nitrite, 0-5.0ppm nitrate, 80.1F temperature. Mind you, the nem looks AWFUL while it does this, deflated and just blah looking so it really concerns me. Woke up this morning and it was closed a bit but the normal look it has when the lights are out. When the lights turned on it slowly opened back up to "happy" look. 20 minutes ago I looked over at the tank and it's in the "i'm gonna spit out brown stuff and give you a heart attack" look and of course, I look close and a string is hanging from its mouth. I'm assuming that this can't be normal and a sign of a happy and healthy RBTA so i've come here for some advice. I've read the change in lights can cause this? I honestly can't remember what lighting the store was using but i'm going to give them a call when they open tomorrow and find out. We also have a slight haze to our water even though our water params are testing within normal ranges, not quite sure whats causing it and if thats why our anemone is upset. Thoughts on that are also appreciated. Specs on our tank are below.
Size - 40 gallon
Age - 8 months (10 months if you count the cycle)
Light - Ocean revive t-247 LED
Inhabitants - 2 ocellaris clowns (added month 2 - 1 week after completed cycle), 2 hermit crabs + 1 cleaner shrimp (added month 4), 1 pajama cardinal + emerald crab (added month 5), watchman goby + tiger pistol shrimp (added month 7), torch coal frag + RBTA (added month 8 - same one we're discussing).
*We quarantine for 1 month before adding them into DT all except the RBTA*
Notes: The cleaner shrimp had bothered the nem on day 2 once he discovered it, touched a tip and the nem contracted inward - once the shrimp moved on the nem came back out.
Going to try and attach some pictures of "happy" nem and "i spit string" nem.
Size - 40 gallon
Age - 8 months (10 months if you count the cycle)
Light - Ocean revive t-247 LED
Inhabitants - 2 ocellaris clowns (added month 2 - 1 week after completed cycle), 2 hermit crabs + 1 cleaner shrimp (added month 4), 1 pajama cardinal + emerald crab (added month 5), watchman goby + tiger pistol shrimp (added month 7), torch coal frag + RBTA (added month 8 - same one we're discussing).
*We quarantine for 1 month before adding them into DT all except the RBTA*
Notes: The cleaner shrimp had bothered the nem on day 2 once he discovered it, touched a tip and the nem contracted inward - once the shrimp moved on the nem came back out.
Going to try and attach some pictures of "happy" nem and "i spit string" nem.
