James Coverdale

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I’m really struggling with my bubble tip anemones (4x small, ~5cm specimens) and am running out of ideas! The tank has been running for around 15 months with bubble tip anemones first introduced 7 months ago. For the first 4 months, they were beautifully healthy, with excellent inflation, colour and growth. However… For the last 3 months the BTAs have been nearly constantly deflated, with very poor tentacle extension… although with a closed mouth and still secured on rockwork at least. Sometimes will accept food. Colour is still good (not worried about bleaching). Water parameters have been very stable (listed below) and I also keep a Haddoni in the same tank (supposedly harder to keep?) which always looks beautiful and I’ve had no issues with. Lit under Red Sea Reef LED50 (Red Sea Max Nano tank running carbon, and Alk/Ca/Mg dosing with Tunze ATO). Water source is all RO for ATO, and salt mix is Red Sea Pro.

Nitrate: ~2 ppm (Red Sea test)
Ammonia: < 0.1 ppm (undetectable)
Nitrite: < 0.1 ppm (undetectable)
Phosphate: ~0.02 ppm (Red Sea Pro)
Calcium: ~450 ppm (ICP)
Magnesium: ~1400 ppm (ICP)
Salinity: 1.026
Temperature: 25.0 C
Light: Reef LED50 @ 50% blue and white

Lights running at 50% Blue and 50% White - I did try increasing light intensity but anemones all moved to base of rock work. Unable to get Cipro antibiotics in the UK.

Tank does have slight current (I think) Cyano bloom (not confirmed, possibility it could be Dino). Other inhabitants are a common clown, anemone crab, cleaner shrimp and 6-line wrasse. Only BTAs with exception of 1x Haddoni (which always looks beautiful… so I’m inclined to think this isn’t a stability issue).

Any help hugely appreciated!!
 

Jekyl

GSP is the devil and clowns are bad pets
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Mine are happy with my nitrate at 15 or so. Running kessil 360we lights at 95% intensity and all 4 are at the top of my rock work.
 

Suohhen

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BTAs can be strange. Sometimes they inflate beautifully and other times they choose to hang upside down under a rock in the shade for months. Obv the strange behavior happens most when freshly split but some are just strange for the sake of being so. A lot of people feed anemones large prey which I simply don't understand. I find everything in my tank likes a mix of zooplankton and golden pearls with the lps, shrooms, and anemones getting a bit of fish eggs added in. I am by no means an expert on feeding but this is what I was able to derive from wading through 1000's of opinions.
I would suggest you test your par as low light is one of the things that consistently makes bta do worse with time. The fact that you said they hid when you turned up intensity doesn't mean they can't handle higher light, everything takes time to adapt to more light so you want to take it slow and be ready for some struggles. I am not very familiar with that light but a single 50w led over a 20g tank at 50% might not be cutting it. It is always best to use a par meter when setting up lights if possible.
For sure low nitrates can be an issue as well as others have stated. If you are starting to get algae it can be hard to keep nitrate up without direct dosing but then that risks feeding the algae. Cyano however is easy to battle with a turkey baster, if it is dinos not so much.
 
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James Coverdale

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Thinking similar....Haddoni is winning this battle, lots going on here, in smaller space. @OrionN may have an idea or two....
I’ve heard a lot about warfare like this… but the BTAs were like this pre-Haddoni (has only been in there for a month or so) so I’m not convinced this is the cause.
 

OrionN

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I thing your BTA does not like something in the water that is not measurable. Is this "something" come from the Haddoni? Maybe but certainly not 100%.

If I am you, I would do several large WC and see if this improve the tank. The solution of pollution/toxicity is dilution. This will most likely cure the problem.
 

Twigg

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I would try running carbon and see if it will pull out some chemicals from the different nems.
 

tailoftwogobies

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has anyone ever seen the anemones oozing a weird substance from their mouths into the water colony in the tank? as well as swelling all over? we’ve never seen ours do this in the 6 month we have had them, we have 6 and 3 are currently all doing the same thing.. the substance is a goo and is almost clear in color.
 

Jekyl

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has anyone ever seen the anemones oozing a weird substance from their mouths into the water colony in the tank? as well as swelling all over? we’ve never seen ours do this in the 6 month we have had them, we have 6 and 3 are currently all doing the same thing.. the substance is a goo and is almost clear in color.
Doesn't sound good. I would create a new post and include pics in white light, parameters and tank age.
 

outhouse

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to much light screwed my growth and and had mine hid for a few years when I switched to leds. Under metal halides I must have had a few hundred at one point, now it looks like 75 maybe. I just decreased light to as low as the boxs would go, and they are now coming out and getting bigger. They never bleached as they can hide where my lps could not.
 

laverda

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has anyone ever seen the anemones oozing a weird substance from their mouths into the water colony in the tank? as well as swelling all over? we’ve never seen ours do this in the 6 month we have had them, we have 6 and 3 are currently all doing the same thing.. the substance is a goo and is almost clear in color.
They can do that for several reasons. They poop from there mouth, which is a stringy brown mucus. They also spawn from there mouth, which is milky white. When one starts spawning others often join in. They can easily turn a large tank milky white and choke out fish when a bunch spawn together.
 

tailoftwogobies

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They can do that for several reasons. They poop from there mouth, which is a stringy brown mucus. They also spawn from there mouth, which is milky white. When one starts spawning others often join in. They can easily turn a large tank milky white and choke out fish when a bunch spawn together.
oh wow… they’ve never done this. our meat coral has done the brown mucus but these have never done anything like this until last night. it was definitely a milky substance.. out of the 6, 3 we’re doing this and one was REALLY constantly doing it.. thank you for telling me!
 

tailoftwogobies

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(on my question) our rock anemones have decided to relocate themselves.. the meat coral that was ooozing the worst of all seems to be happy, i guess they all were just ‘pooping.’ lol
 

bta

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I learned a lot from this his other videos are also very informative unfortunately no longer with us
 
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