serious bta problem...

[greg1786]

hi...I bought a Rbta two and half months ago in perfectly good health. after being in my tank for about three weeks under insufficient lighting , it began consuming its tentacles to feed itself from the lack of available photosynthesis. well after it had lost most all its tentacles and the ones that were left were nub, I began feeding it everyday, moved it higher in the aquarium as well to get it as close to the light as possible. a week and half later I bought a new fixture going from a double 54watt t5 ho zoomed to a quad 54watt t5 ho current usa nova extreme and upgraded to all giesemann bulbs. fastforward to three days ago and the nem made a full recovery. grew all its tentacles back very nicely and was a nice deep pink with green at the base of tentacles. on a side note the nem has been stationary since the first hour its been in the tank. during the period the nem was sick, my female cinnamon clown rarely went in the nem, in fact she only slept with the nem at that point. in the past I would say five days the clown now spends every second tossing around in the nem only leaving it to eat or if one of the fish gets to close she will dart out to back them up a bit. yesterday evening I noticed the nem looked like it was sucking itself in on one side. looking closer at it she actually had a figure eight appearance and seemed like it was stretching over one side of the rock almost like it was trying to pull itself apart. I thought it could perhaps be splitting but couldnt get a good view of its mouth or disk because the clown was flopping around in her. I thought for sure id wake up to two nem today but didn't she still appeared the same. when I got home from work this evening I fed the fish to get the clown to come out so I could inspect the nem and to my surprise her mouth was gaping wide open. This has not been an issue for about a month since she started the recovery process. I checked my water and everything is in order...sg 1.024, temp 80, nitrate 5ppm, phos 0, ammonia and nitrite 0, cal 440, mag 1350, alk 10 , and ph 8.2. I have a mixed reef with zoas, shrooms , an encrusting gorg, and several different types of sps and all corals fish and inverts are doing very well. my params are always rock solid they never fluctuate, I have a homemade auto top off / doser that I mix rodi water with reef complete by seachem to into a gallon water jug and using airline hose I tied a knot to get the drip perfectly to keep water level in check and calcium and other trace elements good. my photo period is one hour actinic lead in to 10 hrs daylight to one hour actinic in pm and then moonlights only over night. I am curious what could be going on with the nem. Is a gaping mouth and pinched oral disc a sign she may be about to split? or is it possible that the extra attention from the clown could be causing stress that bad? I also noticed a week ago she had a punctured tentacle that she immediately shed. I monitored it for a few days but nothing came of it. Again this evening I noticed another shed tentacle floating in the water column. the only change I have made recently was adding a second circulation pump to get some more flow to combat a few dead spots. the new pump is not directed at her and only added a slight increase to the water movement in her area. Would that be a factor? the only other thing I could think of is that a month back I added two peppermint shrimp to take care of an aptasia outbreak. they officially took out the last one five days ago and their cave is directly underneath the rock formation she sits atop, about 8" below her. I have NEVER seen them go near her and I figure the clown would protect her but is it possible that they would mess with her, in reality bta and majano or aptasia are kinda similar. Any and all ideas , recommendations, thoughts, comments , and questions are welcomed. I'm very concerned for her I worked tirelessly bringing her back tp health and would be devastated to lose her. thanks in advance -Greg


Posted from ReefCentral.com App for Android

[567234ta]

first thing i would do is remove the clown, second post a pic of the anemone with a good close up clear shot of the mouth.

[bradleym]

If the nem isn't 3x the size of the clown, they can "love" their nem to death. If this is the case, I would bet that is the problem. Very few people have had trouble with aggressive peppermint shrimp, but every now and then I see a person post something like that. To be honest, it usually ends up being that the shrimp is stealing the food back out of the nem's mouth after it eats, so watch for that too.

[greg1786]

I am working late tonight but when I get home I will work on getting some pictures of the nem, its mouth gaping, and the clown in the nem. despite the mouth being wide open she still remains bubbled. and as far as size is concerned the female cinnamon is about an inch and a quarter long and the nem is about five inches across her oral disc


Posted from ReefCentral.com App for Android

[greg1786]

I've been trying for the passed two nights to get pictures of the nems mouth but I cannot get the clown to leave her for anything and its actually laying on her mouth. the mouth is still partially open , however not gaping as before. I recently came across a thread on a different area of RC and the topic was temp vs salinity/ sg. the posters talk about how a tank at 76 degrees when measured with a hydrometer will be different in sal/sg than that of the same water at 84 degrees. It cautions that a tank at 84 degree with a sg of 1.024 when measured with a hydrometer may actually be closer to 1.020 due to the higher temp causing a less densely packed molecular makeup in the actual water. And hydrometers are calibrated at a low temp with obviously much more densely packed water molecules. trying to keep this as simple as possible they were saying the main inhabitants that would most likely perish from such an issue are sps corals and nems. this raises a red flag for me because I keep my sg at 1.024 (measured by a hydrometer) and my temp at 81 degrees. I failed to mention in my post that I slowly lowered my light fixture from eight inches above water to two inches over the course of four weeks to slowly acclimate everything to the more intense light. this had a direct effect on my tank temp which was generally kept at 78 degrees and now from the added heat of light has rose to 81. while I don't think its the temp that's affecting my nem because that too was a very slow acclimation , meaning the change took place from 78 to 81 over that same four week period. But I am worried that perhaps I'm getting a false reading from my hydrometer at the new hotter temp. Does anyone think this is possible that the nem could be suffering from a lowered salinity?? that perhaps its actually much lower that what my hydrometer is saying? or maybe higher?? I think I may turn my heater off during the photoperiod in order to get the tank temp back to 78 and only run it at night. Any comments or thoughts on this ??


Posted from ReefCentral.com App for Android