Bleaching Rose Anemone - help!

[Anemone]

I agree with Chucker - although I consider this color of rose anemone bleached, I have seen it occur naturally (in an injured, light-deprived clone of my own, for instance).

Kevin

 

[jamesw]

Hi gang,

I learned the hard way that coral bleaching (and this probably includes anemones) is not only caused by heat stress.

I had a slow but almost total bleaching event in my tank over the last 6 months that I couldn't explain. I finally realized what the problem was, and I corrected it an now my corals are darkened up and healthy again!

I believe that a number of factors were responsible for my coral bleaching:

• 1) Bad topoff water. My RO/DI membrane was 'toast' and I didn't know it. I replaced the membrane with a new unit.
  
  2) Low alkalinity. I was adding Kalkwasser to my makeup reservoir, but the reservoir was not sealed. The pH/alk of the Kalkwasser was dropping well before being added to the aquarium - thus it was pretty much doing nothing.

I knew there was a problem when the corals bleached, but it happened in the middle of winter, and my tank was a very stable 80degrees f. So I knew there had to be some other type of problem.

I decided that the thing to do was a massive water change with synthetic seawater made from my new RO/DI. I changed 70 gallons of water from a total system volume of about 120 gallons. The other step that I took was to hook up a Nilsen reactor (made by Nicolas Will) filled with lots of fresh CaOH powder. I regularly add more powder as needed.

Result: my corals are colored back and looking healthy. I had a white M. digitata, now it is brown and green. I had a clear and green frogspawn, now it is brown and green, etc.

And of course, my frags are growing like gangbusters again which is always nice.

Moral of this story:

• Good topoff water IS really important.
  Keep that alkalinity up for healthy corals.

Anyone have similar experiences?

Cheers
James Wiseman

 

[Anonymous]

I apologize. I left out the sentence that would have started the paragraph which stated that the anemone may have been dyed.

I did not mean to say that it IS dyed.

 

[dvb]

The anemone is a little below the midline of my tank which is a 55 gal tall. It sits underneath a slight overhang, but only a little bit of the anemone is under the overhang. I bought a RO/DI unit from Spectrapure a few weeks ago and have been topping off with this water. Although I thought I read in The Reef Aquarium vol. 1 that they questioned the use of RO/DI water as maybe taking out too many trace elements and other things that the anemones would need. I haven't had my local tap water analyzed and I am using the RO/DI unit now. If anyone wants pictures of my tank let me know, I can email them to you. I don't have anyway to post them or a website.

 

[Anemone]

Dr. Ron Shimek has done a study of our tank water and its relationship to actual seawater (April issue of Reefkeeping Magazine). I seriously doubt you have anything to worry about with RO/DI removing "too much" from your water.

Basically, Dr. Ron found that most salt mixes create water that has far more metals and other "trace" elements than NSW, and our feeding only compounds things.....if water from our tanks was accidentally labeled as water taken from a natural reef and sent to a water testing facility, that reef would immediately be labeled "highly polluted."

FWIW,

Kevin

 

[Anonymous]

When you got this anemone what kind of light was it under from the LFS?

If your lighting is drastically brighter or dimmer,the anemone may expell it's zoo. I had a S.gigantea expell her zoo after going from NO bulbs to 96watt PCs. She later regained her zoo. I did feed the bleached anemone once a week as well. Maybe it is a shock bleaching issue. It could also be an acclimation issue. Did you acclimate the anemone slowly?

It could take some time for an anemone to show the signs of distress.

 

[dvb]

The lighting at the LFS was similar to mine. They had it in a 15 gal? tank with PC lights. I do not know the wattage. My rose didn't bleach for a while. I put it in my tank on 11/28/01 and I really noticed it bleaching when my temp started staying around 85-86 degrees in February. I installed my chiller in late April.

It has not bleached overnight, but seems like a slower process. It is still sticky to the touch. So I know that it is relatively healthy.

 

[Anonymous]

Keep feeding and if she stops then you have a problem. I could very well be possible that this is the actual color of your anemone and that the color you saw at the LFS was an adaptation to their conditions.

Good Luck

 

[dvb]

If the anemone expelled all of its zoo, will it eventually replace it or is it gone forever?

The rose was much darker when I bought it. The tentacles are pretty translucent now.

 

[Dragonlady]

......

DON'T change lighting until your anemone is back to good condition. Bleached anemones are hardier than one might think as long as conditions remain stable. Change your lights to MH and they'll die.......

Good luck,

Matties

Changing to MH lighting will not kill your anemone. My BTA colored up nicely under MH lighting. When it was bleached, it did not like direct light from the MH, but now that it has regained its zooanthellae, it seems to prefer being somewhat close to MH light.

 

[MFisher]

My use of will die is incorrect. I should have said "will likely die". Anemones are pretty tought but if you really start to mix up environmental parameters on ANY stressed organism the likelyhood of killing it dreastically increases.

I still stand behind the notion that changing lights at this point is a no-no.

 

[Len]

If the anemone expelled all of its zoo, will it eventually replace it or is it gone forever?

Host anemones, like photosynthetic corals, can adopt new zooxanthellae from the water.

 

[Dragonlady]

Anemones have colored up very nicely for me under MH lighting, given a few months. Several years ago, the same wattage in flourescents gave very poor results for a bleached anemone.

 

[Gary Majchrzak]

I'll add some curveballs into this thread...I believe I'm the one "in the club" that chucker was referring to earlier.{My anemone is/was 30"down in the tank}. Although my rose anemone is a clone of another local reefer's, it is a different color than the parent anemone: A light hot pink color- some might call it "bleached." The other reefers in the club have much darker, and larger rose anemones- including the "parent" anemone of mine.
My rose clone initially settled at the bottom of my 220 gallon reef. Since I knew the coloration of the anemone it split from, I figured it was kind of bleached ... after all ,it was in a dealers tank with minimal PC lighting. It had split off in a reef with 175 watt/ VHO actinic lighting.
The rose anemone languished. That is, until I tossed in a tomato clownfish. It IMMEDIATELY took to the anemone, and we were "off to the races." The rose was blooming.
Leave it to the human to screw things up:
I traded some of my baby cardinalfish for another {reg} bubble-tip anemone. This anemone was a clone from a friends anemone that was housed in a VHO {only} lit tank. The "regular" BTA initially hid from the OBVIOUS increase in lighting. It finally did "come out" and split...it was doing MUCH too well! Got so huge it was killing SPS.
My tomato clownfish took to the regular BTA's. She totally abandoned the rose...and it AGAIN slowly started to "go downhill".
To make a long story short, I believe anemones do better with a host anemonefish present.
I do not believe an increase in lighting will "hurt" an anemone because they are VERY motile. They will shade themselves if it is too much lighting. I also believe the "rose" variety of BTA may be a little more sensitive to environmental conditions than the "standard" BTA.
The tomato clownfish still has not returned to my rose anemone.
She swam 6' down to the other end of the reef and kicked my spawning pair of ocellaris out of their large LTA! GO FIGURE!