Death To All

[sunvsat]

I got a "new" anemone from a maast member a few days ago, he told me he had to peel or pry it off the rock it was on. I got it home and started and completed the acclimation and set it on a nice rock and went to bed. Well, the morning after, the lights came on and I see it floating along the bottom with a huge cloudy slim ball around most of it, I immediately took it out and as I looked at the rest of the tank, I saw that all my zoo's were closed, my fish are lying on the bottom of the tank and gasping and the rest of the tank just looks bad. I put the anemone in my fuge and was that a mistake, within an hour my snails and crabs were in a bad way....I took the anemone out and it smelled like death warmed over..I tossed it. I think I was too late. I did 50% water change and put new charcoal in my filter and took every coral I owned out and rinsed it in clean water that I got from River city and placed them back hoping for the best again. This morning, the tank smelled bad and most of the live stuff in the tank is dead.
Questions....I have cleaned the live rock, will it be OK or is it dead now??
Some of the zoo's look alive but VERY closed...should I keep them or toss them before I screw up the tank again? What else should I do?? :unsure

[::pete::]

That sucks ... what kind of anemone was it and what size tank? I have had them die in the tank before and it didnt harm anything. It sounds like you were on top of it ...

[sunvsat]

Red bubble tip, 24 gal Nano. The green one from Tim is in a bad way, have it and two zoo's and one SPS that are still looking OK in a ten gal quarantine tank and hoping they will pull thru. I didn't know that the BTA could get so small as the green is now!

[AlexKilpatrick]

I think it was a function of the size of your tank. As I am sure you know, tanks that size can go bad very quickly.

As an example, I had a anemone die while I was on a trip. My wife didn't do anything, it just basically decayed in the tank and was taken care of by the skimmer and scavengers and whatnot. There were no ill effects at all, but this was on a 180.

[Dozer]

Red bubble tip, 24 gal Nano. The green one from Tim is in a bad way, have it and two zoo's and one SPS that are still looking OK in a ten gal quarantine tank and hoping they will pull thru. I didn't know that the BTA could get so small as the green is now!

Am I reading this right, are you saying you had two anemones in your 24 gallon? :unsure

[gjuarez]

I had a condelactis anemone die on me one night and killing everything over night. IT really sucks, I was a newby then and I was told that the anemone would thrive in NO fluorescent lighting. I have not bought anything in that store since.

[NaCl_H2O]

To paraphrase GaryP - "The solution to pollution is dilution"

It is the size of your tank - toxins, ammonia, etc. spiked VERY fast after the death. Do a few 50% water changes and give it a few weeks to re-stabalize. If you run a skimmer, try to crank it up for a "wetter" skim, and change out charcoal once a week for a few weeks.

Careful on the large water changes to not drastically change temp, SG, or PH!

[Instar]

So long as the zoos are closed, they will not absorb much of the toxic conditions. Keep them, watch them closely. Chances are they will let you know when the tank is well again by opening back up again. If by some chance they do go RTN on you, frag the bad ones off, toss those and keep the rest till they prove unhealthy. The odds are in their favor for survival though. Really a pretty small tank for a RBTA of any size. Tanks that small usually don't meet light needs first, then other needs such as plankton production. Very hard to constantly meet conditions for many things in a nano. They are labor intensive at this size.