The unhappy anemone...

[Handegard]

Warning, long, detailed post.

Day one (Saturdat)
Ok, about two weeks ago, we tore our tank completly down to clean, move, and switch to Tropic Marin. We took all the corals and fish, and put them in about 6 gallons of water from the reef in a seperate tank for the night.

We then filled the tank with fresh water, added our 50 gallon mix of Tropic Marin over a couple hours, added a bunch of pumps, and let it mix overnight.

Day two (Sunday)
It was discovered that the heater plug heater in.
Salt is at correct salinity in tank. Tank water is at almost 82. Unplug all extra pumps and heaters and let cool to 76. By this time, holding has warmed up to 75.x We also changed out the year old Actinic bulb. 10k was changed 3 days later. Skimmer hadn't been pulling anything out of the water, but after the water change started sucking. We also removed our 'fuge at this time.

Heres where the trouble starts. We noticed the water in the holding tank was cloudy, and both anemones seemed angry/gooey.

We acclimate all inhabitants to back to the tank, and get it all setup. One anemone won't stick to anything. He dissapears in less than a week.

Anemone two looked good, but then he shuffled behind a rock after 3-4 days. He's still back there, but I'm growing worried. He looks like he is "dripping" a gooey booger, but he looks otherwise fine.

Did I just change too much light too quickly? Should I try and rotate him towards light and see if he hides again? All water params are damn good (I've taken a renewed interest in this tanks care)

 

[Skimmy]

why would you change out all your water at one time??
that cingularly could kill your anemones and your fish...
and then you changed salt brands in one total water change??
major stress for the inhabitants of your system.
you must change salt brands slowly and mix it with the current salt you use.
im assuming that you at least transfered your rock, and or some sand from the old tank to the new?
if you broke the whole thing down, cleaned it, and set it back up with new water and new salt, then you will totally have to cycle your tank again before things stabilize. hopefully if its only 2 fish and 2 anemone in a 55g they wont die from ammonia poisoning, but i think your anemones are toast. good luck though, you can hope im wrong....

 

[Handegard]

We tore the whole tank down, and we re-used all the rock. It's alot of rock, dare I say a excessive amount. We switched salts because we were out of any others, and couldn't afford to buy Oceanic (which I've been having problems with) and Tropic Marin. We kept the critters in the original tank water, and slowly acclimated them. We also have a bunch of rock in the sump, and I forgot to mention that we put about 10 gallons of "old" tank water back in.

The anemones started to exhibit problems before going in the new tank water. And I've gotten zero-zero-zero on Amonia, nitrite, and nitrate, on several tests (probably 8-9 tests in 2 weeks, 2 different test kits, both fastest and quickdips, and Salifert for Alk, Calc, and Phos)

I find it hard to believe changing salt (while temp, PH, phos, alk, and calc are all at very similar levels) can be any harder on a fish or coral than bringing its home from a store that has different filtration, lighting, water params, salt mixes, etc. This was athree day process, in which I got the new water and old water to similar params, temp, everything...

 

[Skimmy]

changing salts without buffering between the 2 can potentially kill all your corals, several threads here and on rc about that. it would depend on other factors as well, like salt brands and tank parameters.
if you measured your salinity, ph, and alk in your old tank water and then matched those parameters in the new water that would have helped,
certainly having lots of live rock will help, and using bateria starter products will help as well, but you cant replace what time has to do to mature the tank water with a magic bullet. and anemones are notorious for not doing well in systems less that 6 -12 months old that arent matured.
hopefully you'll beat the odds and everything will be fine.

 

[Handegard]

Well, I seem to have been passed some bad advice if what you say is true...

 

[BCT182]

if you broke the whole thing down, cleaned it, and set it back up with new water and new salt, then you will totally have to cycle your tank again before things stabilize. hopefully if its only 2 fish and 2 anemone in a 55g they wont die from ammonia poisoning, but i think your anemones are toast. good luck though, you can hope im wrong....

I would think the sand and all of his rock would be ok..... Pouring water from a reef tank into a new set up system wont make the tank cycled. I know, I tried long ago.

 

[Handegard]

I would think the sand and all of his rock would be ok..... Pouring water from a reef tank into a new set up system wont make the tank cycled. I know, I tried long ago.

No sad, I'm sadly BB,

I feel that the tank cycle was a non-issue. Total empty volum of the tank/sump is 49 gallons. When the rock was added, I believe about 15 gallons was taken out. We took more out when we added the water from the old tank in the acclimation process.

I think this would roughly work out to a 70% water change, 35gallons of water with about 10 being old.

On top of that, my anemone's were becomming unhappy before they went in the new tank...

 

[Skimmy]

We took all the corals and fish, and put them in about 6 gallons of water from the reef in a seperate tank for the night.
We then filled the tank with fresh water, added our 50 gallon mix of Tropic Marin over a couple hours, added a bunch of pumps, and let it mix overnight.

if all you saved was 6gal, i think you did more than a 70% water change.
any way you slice it this sort of drastic fast change is going to totally stress your anemones and make them unhappy...... exactly what you titled this post. hopefully they will recover if you keep things stable at the appropriate levels. if you know someone with a very nice, clean reef tank that is well aged, take their water change water(as long as they didnt siphon detritus) and do a partial water change with their water, or do no water changes with fresh salt water until your the tank has a chance to build up some more bacteria and microfauna (about a month). if you do use someone elses tank water make sure that there isnt alot of nitrates or phosphates in it, and that it is very close to the water parameters in your existing system, if not, then buffer accordingly. maintain carbon and skimmer use for water quality. your regime sounds like it might also benifit from the addition of a refugium, that would help with the recolonization of the microfauna.

 

[Rod Buehler]

What help would someone elses water be? Bacteria? I dont think that there is much benificial bacteria in the water column (somenone elses water). The benificial bacteria need a surface/substrate (rock/sand) to colonize on.

Large water changes usually will pose no threat unless changing salts, which you did, so that could be an issue, but I think that the main issue lies within holding these animals in such a small container overnight. Anemonies perge themselves and reinflate with clean water and it more often done at night. They likely didnt have enough clean oxygenated water to "clean " themselves. There is also a posibility that they spawned in the holding container which can also be very stressful.

If your existing rock was kept submerged you should not have a large cycle again. There should have been no (very little) die off if you kept the rock sumberged, so there should be nothing to start another cycle and the existing bacteria shold still be there and will handle any ammonia that would have been created by any die off if there was any. On the other hand if you let your live rock sit druy all night, there will be a huge cycle.

using bacteria starters may help with a cycle in short terms for emergency ammonia spikes, but for starting our reefs with bacteria they are no good IMO. Is usually an aerobic bacteria, and the bacteria that we want in our reefs is anaerobic.

Be patient and keep the water conditions good. The anemone that looked good and climbed behind the reef and now is "gooey/dripping" is likely going to split due to the stressful conditions

 

[Skimmy]

What help would someone elses water be? Bacteria? I dont think that there is much benificial bacteria in the water column (somenone elses water). The benificial bacteria need a surface/substrate (rock/sand) to colonize on.

yes, the water colum does contain a sizeable amount of bacteria.
what help would someone elses water be? well think about it for a minute..
if it's a healthy, aged reef it's full of beneficial mico organisms, nutrients, bacteria, and appropriate target water parameters. all things that would be very helpfull to reef inhabitants stressed out by living in freshly made saltwater.

 

[returnofsid]

The water column does not contain a large ammount of your bacterial colony. The bacterial colony needs something to attach to, ie...live rock, live sand, glass, powerheads, other internal equipement. Doing a massive WC is not usually harmful to the tank inhabitants. Changing the salt would make it possibly harmful. I do agree with a previous post stating that the problem most likely isn't the WC in and of itself but probably more to do with the small amount of water they were kept overnight in and the change in salts. Handagard, if your live rock was healthy before the move, and kept submerged in circulated and oxygenated water, I don't think you'll experience much of a cycle. You bacterial colony would survive quite well under those conditions. Just be careful to watch your water parameters for any large deviations. Your anenome was probably stressed by the move and temporary housing more than by the massive WC. Good luck!! Hope it pulls out of it.

 

[Skimmy]

i suggest you guys look at some saltwater under a microscope and then tell me there is no bacteria. besides, i agree, there is MORE bacteria on the surfaces within the aquarium, but it is ALSO in the water. and my recommendation has just as much to do with the microfauna and water parameters as the bacteria. you simply cannot do anything to treat saltwater to make up for maturity. do we not all agree that thriving mature reef tanks are going to have healthier water than freshly set up ones? enough said...
handy- i hope your anemones make a full recovery, good luck

 

[Handegard]

Large water changes usually will pose no threat unless changing salts, which you did, so that could be an issue, but I think that the main issue lies within holding these animals in such a small container overnight. Anemonies perge themselves and reinflate with clean water and it more often done at night. They likely didnt have enough clean oxygenated water to "clean " themselves. There is also a posibility that they spawned in the holding container which can also be very stressful.

To cariffy, the holding container had heat and a couple of pumps churning the water, with a considerable ammount of surface agitation.

If your existing rock was kept submerged you should not have a large cycle again. There should have been no (very little) die off if you kept the rock sumberged, so there should be nothing to start another cycle and the existing bacteria shold still be there and will handle any ammonia that would have been created by any die off if there was any. On the other hand if you let your live rock sit dry all night, there will be a huge cycle.

Not that stupid Yeah, the rock was all kept submerged, with heat, the first night. It was never dry. I feel that the cycle is a non-issue, as I've been testing repeatedly and getting zero amonia, nitrite, or nitrate. There was also water in the buckets the rock was kept in, so I probably reused about 10-15 gallons or old tank water. Adding the rock displaced about 10, so that'd ammount to 10-15gallon of old water in about 40 gallons of volume.

Mark Thanks for the help, try not to think of me as stubborn, think of me as learning the hard way Just like with my Bio-balls [*grin*]