Anemone Help Please

[Rob]

Hello everybody! I am new to the forum, just joined several weeks back. I purchased a reterri anemone a couple of weeks back from the LFS on Reindeer Trail, and I am getting a bit worried that he has a gaping mouth. It had a small tear in its foot when I bought him, and I figured he would heal up ok. Since I bought him I have read up that this particular anemone is one of the harder ones to keep. Noob mistake on my part. He seems to be doing ok, I have two GBTAs that are doing fine. One of the GBTAs got tore up pretty bad when he ventured into an intake for my fX5.

My question is this..........does anyone know where I can get my hands on some cipro 250mg to run a 5-7 day treatment on the reterri? I called my dogs vet at La Cantar Animal Hospital and she does not treat fish. Can someone point me in the right direction for this?

I would appreciate any assistance possible.

Rob

[Rob]

I forgot to post a pic of the anemone. Hope it works here.

[ClamFan]

TTT! I cant help you but hopefully someone will chime in. By the way, how long has your system been up and running? Give us the size of tank sump or no, lighting, ect. Specs on your tank help a lot! Best of luck Rob!!

[ErikH]

Not sure about the cipro, but have your water tested, and yank the nem out if it stinks.

[Mike]

What type of lighting and how old are the bulbs ?

[Rob]

Thanks ClamFan!

The tank has been up and running for about three months now.
The tank is a 75 gallon. It has about three inches of crushed coral base. There are 60lbs of live rock in the tank and another 10lbs of LR rubble in an fx5 canister. I am planning on taking out the filter sponges an put smaller LR rubble in their place. I am getting micro bubbles coming out of the return, so I am hoping the nitrates are being broken down in the canister. I have the intake and return to the canister set as low as I can to maximize the contact time between the water and the rubble.

I am running an aqua c remora pro skimming the tank. The skimmer is set to run on a koralia smartwave so that is runs in 6hr cycles for a total of 12hrs a day. I am running 2 hydor 1150 power heads and 2 hydor 1500 power heads running on a red sea wavemaster.

I recently bumped the temp up to 80 degrees F from 77 degrees F. I am running a 300w fluval heater. The heater just went in last week. I was running two other heaters in the tank before and my thermometer was reading 80 degrees. when I put the new one in the display read the water temp at 77 degrees. This new one seems pretty efficient and accurate.

ErikH I have been testing the water with the red sea kits, and the only thing that seems out of place is the phosphates.

today results were:
ph 8.2
nitrate 2
ammonia 0
nitrite .05
alkalinity 11
phosphate .64

this thing cant keep up with my typing...........giving up going slow.

oddly enough the macro algae I bought all died. ithought high phosphates wee god foralgae. The results wee the same for latweek.

Mike I am running a glo t5ho lamp. 1 blue atinic and 1 8k white. I am also running the 36w orbit marine led. It starts to ramp up to full intensity from 8 to 8:30 in the morning. It comes down to moon mode from 6 to about 10. I turn the glo on in the morning and shut it off when the leds go to moon mode.

I just set up a quarantine ank I am going t plce the aneoes n there to run an anibitic treatmntn them. I think I a oing to start vok dosng to see what affect tat has on th watearameters.

Livestock. 2 GTBAs. 1 riterri. 1 tank raised ocellaris, 2 wild ocellaris, 1 tank raised black clownfish, 4 damsels, 1 sixline wrasse.coupl o frags of zoas, several fras of gsp. three mushrooms. two large rock covered in gsp. and a small amount of xenia. oh and a tiny scuba steve that mr cob threw in with an order I got from him a couple of weeks back.

Rob

[ClamFan]

Your welcome Rob. IMO your tank isn't quite done with the cycle. Im thinking a quarantine tank is a good idea. I wish I could be more help but Im just not real familiar with nems.

[Sherita]

Rob,

You still have nitrites in your tank, so the cycle hasn't quite finished. The Ritteri is one of the most difficult of the nems to keep. It's normally accepted that a tank should be at minimum several months old, over a year is better, before adding nems. By then the params are stable and you will have some experience under your belt. That being said, do a search for Fish Flox, there are several places that you can purchase it without a prescription (it's a fish med), and it's the same thing as ciprofloxacin (Cipro). Best of luck with the nem, keep us updated :)

[Bill S]

As you noted, and others as well, a Ritteri is "more than difficult". These are one of those critters that probably shouldn't be taken - they really are for experts. I've been in this hobby since the early 70s, and I wouldn't buy one. I'd guess that 99% of them are dead within 3 months.

Putting one in a new tank, is likely a recipe for disaster. Not just for the anemone, but possibly for the whole tank.

So, that being said, I'd keep a close eye on it - it's possible you could be lucky. If it starts to go, get it out right away. The fact that it wasn't entirely healthy to start with, isn't a good sign.

P.S. I bought my first Retteri in 1973. It lasted about a week.

[Rob]

Thanks Sherita. That is what I was looking for. I had already found a broad spectrum erythromycin that I started the GTBA on Friday. Today is the last day of treatment. I wanted to run a treatment on the GTBA since it had been damaged when it got into the intake of the fx5. It appears to be responding favorable. It has expelled what appears to be mesenterial filaments (the white ones) laterally through its column. Additionally, it appears to have expelled gametogenic tissue also laterally through its column. I don't know if this is good, but it also appears to have been increasing the zooanthellae as it appears to be going from a brown color back to a green. Of course this might have to do with me keeping the QT in full sunlight throughout the day.

I tried taking pictures of what I am seeing, but I need a macro lense for my camera to pick this stuff up. On a side note, those lenses are expensive! I guess there is nothing cheap about this hobby.


bstreep,



Thanks for the post and information! I started realizing what I had gotten into after reading more and more about all this. I do enjoy a challenge so onward I will go. I found a really interesting article that surveyed people on their anemones. It was a really interesting read, and provided some insight into some broad guidelines that might assist in improving the success rate for anemones in tanks. The article is not species specific, but the generalities are a good place for a new guy to start documenting what works and what doesn’t.
http://saltaquarium.about.com/od/seaanemoneprofiles/ss/sbsanemonesurvey.htm (http://saltaquarium.about.com/od/seaanemoneprofiles/ss/sbsanemonesurvey.htm)



Mike,
I do believe that I do not have sufficient light with what I am running on this tank. This is something I am noticing with the QT in full sunlight. I have picked up some slotted hatchery thingies from the big box fish shop and have placed one of the GTBA in it so that it can stay up on the water column several inches below the led fixture and T5ho’s that I have. This seems to be helping. I am going to place an order for the hydra 52, they seem to pack quite the punch from what I have seen on youtube and read online.

[Bill S]

BTAs are mostly photosynthetic, in my experience. I've had RBTAs for many years - maybe coming up on 10 years? There are dozens of my clones running around San Antonio. I never feed mine.

They are an order of magnitude easier than many other popular anemones, too.