Rock flower anemone

Isiah1820 · Nov 17, 2022

This RFA I believe was getting stung on its edges by the frogspawn pictured. Was told just leave it be and I’ll move when it wants. And I did only thing is I have no idea where it went lol. It’s been 2 days and I check when the blues come on cause the colors pop under the blue and at night. Hopefully it’s good where ever it’s at.

Bad placement of coral on my part.

Ron Reefman · Nov 18, 2022

First of all, that doesn't look like a RFA to me. That looks more like a maxi-mini anemone. And it doesn't have nearly the tolerance for being stung by the frogspawn that a RFA would.

If I were you, I'd keep looking, maybe even do some moving of rocks to try and find the nem. They aren't the smartest of inverts. I've had a nem move under a rock, out of the light and away from water flow and then start starving, shrinking and even turning almost white. I moved it to a new spot and it recovered.

Consider placing your nems in a PVC end cap and putting it in the sand bed. Even sand can go in the end cap if the nem has a good foothold in the cap. The nems I do this with almost never move again!

Isiah1820 · Nov 18, 2022

I’m not referring to the mini maxi that is also in the picture my guy. It’s a small RFA if you look hard enough lol.

JoJosReef · Nov 18, 2022

I have an octospawn that roughs up my RFAs. One finally had enough and moved all the way around the tank and finally settled on the other side. Took it about a week or so to settle. But yes, if you aren't able to see it, I'd start looking for it. Actually, three of my RFAs moved because of that one octospawn.

Isiah1820 · Nov 18, 2022

JoJosReef said:
I have an octospawn that roughs up my RFAs. One finally had enough and moved all the way around the tank and finally settled on the other side. Took it about a week or so to settle. But yes, if you aren't able to see it, I'd start looking for it. Actually, three of my RFAs moved because of that one octospawn.

Yea I wanted to avoid doing that but I’ll end up doing it when I do a water change in a few days.

jkcoral · Nov 18, 2022

I have an RFA that has been getting annihilated by a hammer coral for little over 6 months. He’s missing half of his disk, but he doesn’t seem to really care and hasn’t moved at all haha. He eats and acts totally normal, just looks beat up. It hasn’t decided it is time to move yet

RFAs are resilient little creatures, dang near bomb proof. The only things I’ve seen kill a flower are peppermint shrimp and very cold temperatures.

Your little guy probably got sick of being beat up and finally decided to move. Don’t worry too much, I have over 100 RFAs, and sometimes one will move from its spot and remain unseen for several months! And from the looks of it, your RFA only appears to have had some of his tentacles zapped

Here is a picture of my hammer live in the act:

Kellie in CA · Nov 18, 2022

Yup, I had the same situation. RFA being stung by a hammer and it absolutely refused to move.... he just kept taking it!

MaxM · Nov 18, 2022

About 3 wks ago one of my rfas walked through my rock stack to the area behind. I used a mirror in order to see it. I noticed that it was gone again a couple days ago. This evening I saw it on the front side of the rock scape just a little higher up from its original spot.

Yours will likely pop out somewhere soon. I think there's more chance of hurting by moving rocks than it staying in a crevice forever.

Isiah1820 · Nov 18, 2022

jkcoral said:
I have an RFA that has been getting annihilated by a hammer coral for little over 6 months. He’s missing half of his disk, but he doesn’t seem to really care and hasn’t moved at all haha. He eats and acts totally normal, just looks beat up. It hasn’t decided it is time to move yet

RFAs are resilient little creatures, dang near bomb proof. The only things I’ve seen kill a flower are peppermint shrimp and very cold temperatures.

Your little guy probably got sick of being beat up and finally decided to move. Don’t worry too much, I have over 100 RFAs, and sometimes one will move from its spot and remain unseen for several months! And from the looks of it, your RFA only appears to have had some of his tentacles zapped

Here is a picture of my hammer live in the act:

this is what I’ve seen a couple time with the frogspawn tentacles stuck to the RFA and I would use something to pull it off. And then started to notice the outer edges taking damage. Just like you guys I let it rock out and he finally had enough and moved lol. So hopefully he resurfaces, and I don’t have to go looking by time I do my WC Sunday.

Isiah1820 · Nov 22, 2022

I ended up finding it under the same rock that’s in the picture. I have 3 corals glued to that rock if I didn’t I would simply flip it over. What should I do? It’s a smaller RFA compared to my others iDk how I would be able to pry it off and relocate it. Or just leave it where it’s getting zero light

MaxM · Nov 22, 2022

It will come out. They also eat bits of food that fall on them.

doubleshot00 · Nov 22, 2022

I have a huge RFA between a frammer and a octospawn and just this week I noticed he looked like someone was eating his edges. I didn’t put two together so thanks for the post.

And the thing is you can move these things. They get so rooted into cracks and rock work its almost impossible to remove.

jkcoral · Nov 23, 2022

Isiah1820 said:
I ended up finding it under the same rock that’s in the picture. I have 3 corals glued to that rock if I didn’t I would simply flip it over. What should I do? It’s a smaller RFA compared to my others iDk how I would be able to pry it off and relocate it. Or just leave it where it’s getting zero light

Personally, I’d just leave it a let it do its thing. If anything, you could maybe put a small piece of PVC or something under one side of the rock to kind of elevate/prop it up off the sand bed/bottom a bit. This might give the little guy an easier way to crawl out without turning your rock over.

When he does finally emerge, I’d just target feed him with some reef roids or benepets, and wait to give him some meaty food once he bounces back a bit.

jkcoral · Nov 23, 2022

doubleshot00 said:
I have a huge RFA between a frammer and a octospawn and just this week I noticed he looked like someone was eating his edges. I didn’t put two together so thanks for the post.

And the thing is you can move these things. They get so rooted into cracks and rock work it’s almost impossible to remove.

I’m sure yours will be fine, and it’ll just move once he gets sick of being stung haha.

And yeah, they are hard to move. I almost never try and move them because of the risk of damaging their foot. A nem with a damaged foot is a dead nem. If you ever really need to move one though, you can look up the “nem canon” or “anemone canon” here on reef to reef. They work well!

doubleshot00 · Nov 23, 2022

jkcoral said:
I’m sure yours will be fine, and it’ll just move once he gets sick of being stung haha.

And yeah, they are hard to move. I almost never try and move them because of the risk of damaging their foot. A nem with a damaged foot is a dead nem. If you ever really need to move one though, you can look up the “nem canon” or “anemone canon” here on reef to reef. They work well!

I did a tank transfer a while back and had to move a few and used cold water and a flat tip screw driver. I got a few off that way but 2 or 3 i couldn’t get off.

Isiah1820 · Nov 23, 2022

MaxM said:
It will come out. They also eat bits of food that fall on them.

The spot he’s in under the rock I doubt it.

Isiah1820 · Nov 23, 2022

doubleshot00 said:
I have a huge RFA between a frammer and a octospawn and just this week I noticed he looked like someone was eating his edges. I didn’t put two together so thanks for the post.

And the thing is you can move these things. They get so rooted into cracks and rock work its almost impossible to remove.

No problem mine was a nice ultra too but was small I think a baby so it looked bad on the edges closer to the frogspawn. And yea they will recede completely into a rock