my anemone curles up.

[Nathan1098]

i have only had this anemone for 2 weeks. At night he looks great! plump and full. but when the lights kick on he looks like the attatched picture.

for lighting i have two 65watt power compacts as pictured. i also have two "regular" type lights that i did get at a pet store and they are advertised as "ocean sun".

originaly i contacted the local pet store i bought the anemone from the owner seemed to think that it was because of the lighting. (as i tested my water and it was good) she suggested that i turn off the "ocean sun" lights because it could be the wrong spectrum.

If i have left anything out that you think is important please let me know


I thank you for you advice

-Nathan J.

 

[hdtran]

Your picture is on the large side. Can you (or your LFS) tell us what kind of anemone it is?

 

[Nathan1098]

when i asked the person at the store she replyed with "sebae anemone".

its base under the sand is red.

 

[Nathan1098]

when i asked the person at the store she replyed with "sebae anemone".

its base under the sand is red.

 

[hdtran]

I'm sure someone will ask you for your water parameters (temperature, pH, nitrogens, calcium, alkalinity, salinity), so I won't.

Sebaes do need strong lighting and good water flow. It may have been underlit at the store (not uncommon), and is shrinking under the lights while trying to adjust to your brighter tank. But you need to give it the strong light so that it can photosynthesize. Maybe you should ramp your lights up to full strength, rather than immediately blast the anemone with full strength lighting.

You might wander over to the reefcentral forums, and look at the "anemone care" document in a sticky at the top of their "new reefkeepers" forum. It points to an excellent (but lengthy) document on anemone care.

Best of luck.

 

[Nathan1098]

temperature 79 f
pH = 8.3
nitrogens = 0
calcium i do not currently track this i have a lot of live rock and was
under the impresion that i did not need to track this unless
i was keeping hard corals.
alkalinity is this the ph???
salinity = 1.024

 

[hdtran]

Snails, crabs, and coralline algaes also use calcium, but if you're not keeping corals or clams, you need not test calcium. You can get away with doing water changes to replenish calcium.

Alkalinity is a measure of carbonate buffering capacity, and is different from pH.

I have a hard time telling with your picture (try resampling them with fewer pixels), but your anemone looks healthy. If you can put separate timers on your lights, try staggering the times, so you don't come to full brightness all at once.

 

[Anonymous]

the light shouldnt hurt it...actually it looks "bleached"... as a result of expelling xoozanthellae...i cant really tell by looking at the pic.

 

[reefsnreptiles1]

That anemone is definitely bleached and will need to be fed more often in order to have a chance of surviving and regaining its zooxanthellae.

 

[Anonymous]

that settles it then..the reason it shys from light...it is recoverable if you start feeding it now...meaty foods preferably..silver sides, plankton, frozen squid or clam meat..i would feed it every other day...if youre lucky it will regain its coloring and survive indefinitely..

 

[Nathan1098]

Thanks so much for the information. i am feeding it freze dryed jumbo shrip. is that a good diet? should i use more than just the shrimp?

How long does it take for him to regain his color if he has bleached?


also i have attached a better picture of him curley. I also attatched a picture of him when i first got him. maybe this will help because this is simular to what he looks like at night. sorry for the poor sizeing eairler.



one more thing why is it that when i post it post double?



thanks for the help!
Nathan J.

 

[Anonymous]

im sorry i take that back he is not bleached...that is definitely not bleached...that is a sebae anemone....however im am not sure of the cause of it shying away from light..what do you use for lighting?? MH,VHO,PC??? it just may be adjusting to its new enviroment...and yes feeding it shrimp would be ok..you will only need to do this once a week since its not bleached...

 

[Nathan1098]

so he is not bleached? so is he supposed to curl up during the day?
should i be concerned or doing something different?

 

[Anonymous]

give it time to adjust to your lighting..how long has your tank been up and running??? 130W of PC you are running should be fine enough for that sebae..the way its curled up isnt to bad..you might have problems when it totally starts to invert...