Rock Flower Anemone removal

[Sonam]

Hi All,

We have a large rock flower anemone in our system. It’s lovely, but it’s deadly. We had a few small fish that disappeared (6 line wrasse and a small cardinal fish) - we didn’t know what to think. We’ve had the system for years and never just had fish disappear overnight.

Then we saw this:

This was one of our fire shrimp. She was laden with eggs and her mate was watching this happen.

So now we want to remove it. But how? We don’t want it to kill more of the livestock in the tank.

 

[Peace River]

Let's see if we can get some help with your RFA challenge...

#reefsquad @Ron Reefman

 

[saltyhog]

Man that's pretty weird! Ordinarily I would be very skeptical of a RFA killing a healthy fish or shrimp but if that shrimp was alive when the pic was taken I can understand the concern. I have 4 huge RFA's with 5 shrimp and a bunch of wrasses with no problems for several years.

If it's accessible I have removed them by pushing firmly against the foot where it is attached and gradually wearing it out until it lets go. It can take a while. Mine are all attached to the bottom glass but yours looks like it's on a rock? If you can take the rock out it might be easier to remove it.

 

[King Turkey]

hum you could change flow wait to see if it moves and nab it out when it try's to move. you could remove whole rock it is on also.

 

[ZoWhat]

You remove it by irritating its "foot" with an ice cube.....

The cold ice cube irritates this super suction foot and it "gives up" its hold bc it hates the cold of the ice cube

Takes patience and a lot of ice cubes but it WILL work

Hth

 

[Auto-pilot]

Ive placed a power head at its foot and its released after a couple hours. One time I wanted to move a rock flower and I put it in a quarantine with a way lower salinity and it moved off the rock because it was unhappy

 

[vetteguy53081]

Ouch. Get a toothbrush at its' base and lightly stroke at it until it loosens.

 

[Ron Reefman]

If it's well attached to a rock, and it probably is, it can be a really tough job!

Can you get the rock out of the tank?

If you can get it out, try holding the rock so the anemone is hanging off the bottom of the rock just above a small container of tank water. That's assuming there are no other corals on the rock that could dry out. It may take awhile, but it will eventually let got.

If you have access to the base of the foot, almost anything that is small or thin pushed at the interface of the foot and rock will start to get it to let go. I have a soft plastic scraper designed for use on an acrylic tank that works pretty well. I also have a small thin blade knife that I ground the end flat but not sharp and have been able to press hard against the rock and wiggle it under the foot. But it's easy to damage the foot which can kill it so be very careful, gentle and slow.

I've never had any luck with the ice cube trick, and I'd never try that inside the tank.

I've lost a couple of small fish and a couple of shrimp over the last few years and I've never wanted to blame the RFA's. But it probably has been the reason for my losses. When there isn't any body to be found...

Good luck.

 

[Sonam]

Thank you to everyone for the replies. It took some effort and coaxing but we were able to finally remove it. We used a chopstick to gently push its foot (too deep in the rock to each by hand) and it eventually got irritated enough to loosen. In the meantime, because of all the fussing, the rock came loose too and we removed the whole thing. It wasn’t until the rock was out of the water that we were able to get it off completely.

The fire shrimp was healthy when it was caught - the anemone was located near the passage between rocks and fish and shrimp frequently move through that “tunnel”.

Honestly we had no idea these anemones could capture and eat such large critters!

Very grateful for everyone’s advice.