New Print and eBook on Amazon:   Anemone Success Doing what it takes to keep Anemones healthy long-term by Robert (Bob) Fenner

Bubble tip anemone Eating its tentacles     10/4/17
Hi team
<Matt>
Absolutely great site by the way. I have kept bubble tip anemones for a few years now and I'm hoping you can help me with something that has me completely stumped. The anemone (E. Quad) in question is in a 2 foot cube
with a few other bubble tips
<All clones I trust>
and a pair of clowns and a mandarin (refugium). It is a few years old so well established with stable reef
parameters. The only change in the last few months is i did a small rescape just moving a few rocks and did not disturb the sand. All anemones seem to be in perfect health except one which i have been observing it place its
tentacles in it's mouth and sucking the ends out of the tentacles and pulling long strings out of them this seems to happen frequently and now the anemone although it expands well used the tentacle pattern is now irregular and half of the anemone has short fat tentacles. It still eats and is under high powered led it grew and thrived under. I'm not sure what the cause is (possible bacterial infection) as the system is just anemones and 3 fish so rules out chemical warfare. I cannot find an answer anywhere and I'm extremely knowledgeable on this particular anemone. It is literally chewing off the end of it's tentacles.
Thanks in advance
Matt
<Have seen this before. Sounds/reads like manifestation of "Old Tank Syndrome". I would move the mal-affected BTA elsewhere, stat. Bob Fenner>
Re: Bubble tip anemone Eating its tentacles      10/5/17
Hi Bob,
<Hey Matt>
Thank you for your response. If i could just pick your brain a bit more and get a little more clarity on the issue.
<Sure>
Firstly have you observed/heard of this behavior of a bubbletip taking it tentacles to it's mouth and extruding filaments which it seems to digest?
<Yes I have... mesenterial filaments are about all the insides of an anemone that there are>
If so what is the purpose of this?
<I consider it to be a pathological event. An indication that something/s wrong>
Is there any benefit to the animal?
<I doubt it. Seems self-destructive>
The only thing that comes to mind is it's feeding of the Zooxanthellae or rearranging the population or it's starving.
<An interesting speculation>
The next question is you say it may be old tank syndrome. What gave you the impression?
<OTS is such a general expression... what could be the cause/s here?>
Rearranging the rock kicking up detritus?
<Perhaps a factor>
The reason I'm asking is to prevent any other anemones from declining. I have heard people say "old tank syndrome" (By no means in regards to your earlier response) when they can't pinpoint the root of a problem and have come across different theories as to what old tank syndrome means.
<I'm one of those folks. Have recently re-read my several hundred pound, thousands of hobbyist magazines; including a later piece in AFI (Aquarium Fish International) re OTS>
Anywhere from excess nutrients built up in rock and substrate leaching back into the system to and imbalance of elements or bacterial populations.
<Ah yes>
I am religious when it comes to water changes and this system get at least 10% weekly and clarification on this will tell me the best way to proceed and prevent healthy anemones remain that way for as long for many more years to come.
<You are wise here; or should I state, that you and I's philosophies and practices appear confluent>
Once again thank you for you time and knowledge.
Matt
<Glad to share. Thank you. Bob Fenner>
Re: Bubble tip anemone Eating its tentacles      10/5/17
Thanks Bob,
<Welcome Matt>
One last question In the cases you are aware of does the decline Spell the end of the animal or can this be reversed and a healthy specimen or is my anemone doomed no matter what i do.
Matt
<If memory serves, there are few incidences of survival>

Sick RBTA; using WWM      7/26/15 <WHY not follow our instructions re file size? Am in Curacao; it's taken min.s to download your non-cropped image of more than two Megs> Sigh. I know my tank is too small (only 28 gal. <And obviously too polluted> I wish I had been told this prior to purchasing & making creature miserable, if not outright murdering it). I have a JBJ PRO model with LED lighting: daytime, dusk/dawn & moonlighting Specs list daylight as 25x3 watt 14 k; dawn/dusk: 4x3 watt 466nm; moonlight: 2x1 watt 456nm, so although my star polyp has grown 5 times original size in 4 months, my RBTA looks terrible: has not moved since finding its place on a live rock; bubble tips have shrunk & are dark looking, although lately they seem to be on the mend, or at least are not black! I have included a pic. Don't mind the hair algae as I have replaced my skimmer to an AquaMaxx HOB which does a brilliant job! <Not yet> Actually, the hair algae has been 90% reduced! So you can imagine the poor skimmer quality (was a JBJ that fir into the back compartment...but it was rubbish!) <It seems you know the answer to your issue here> Do you think I can save this little, miserable guy, or should I give him back to the store from whom I purchased it & perhaps they can help it mend. Mea culpa. :(( Jennifer Rossi New Orleans <Just read on WWM re Entacmaea. Your answers are further gone over and over there. Bob Fenner>

Sick BTA; allelopathy, chemical starvation, reading   12/31/12
Dear WWM Crew:
First off, Happy New Year!! Secondly, I have a sickly BTA that I bought about 2 months ago from Liveaquaria.com . The anemone originally found a rock crevice where it seemed to do well for the first few weeks. I did not do a very good job target feeding it. The BTA then moved further into a hole in the rock & has been "on the move" since then. It is deflated, very small, with mouth open & tentacles retracted. It keeps moving slowly from rock to rock and has not opened up or inflated for about a month.
<Not atypical behavior for a new Entacmaea; reacting to "something" undesirable" here... conditions, tank-mate wise. Let's see...>
The system is a 90g with a 40g refugium. Circulation pump is Rio 3200.
There are 3-600 gph powerheads - 1 directed from back to front in the center, 2 directed toward each other  from each side, all about 4 inches below water line. Filtration is with a Turboflotor Blue skimmer, filer sock, and carbon in a reactor.
Lighting is provided by 4 x 48" T5s: two white, 1 purple, 1 actinic. Most of the rock work is about 12-16 inches from the lights at the highest point of the rocks.
The BTA is currently located toward the lower part of the tank, which would be about 8" from the tank bottom & about 20" from the T5 bulbs in the canopy. The BTA  does not seem to move up toward the light. At night with the lights off (except for moon lights) the BTA reaches upward, tentacles still retracted & mouth open. When feeding it Mysis or small pieces of shrimp the BTA will not "grab" the food (no tentacles) and the food floats away.
Tank-mates are: 2 yellow tail damsels, 1 yellow sailfin, 1 Ocellaris about 3" long, 1 pajama cardinal, a few Mexican turbo snails & red-legged hermits. As for cnidarians: several very large green encrusting Montiporas, literally hundreds of green Corallimorphs located on most all of the rocks, 2 species of Rhodactis, a few Ricordeas, 2 Zoanthid colonies.
<Might well be the Shrooms and/or Zoanthids are combating the anemone chemically here. All new Cnidarians need to be acclimated over weeks time via a separate system, mixing water. Read here:
http://www.wetwebmedia.com/CorlCompArt.htm
and the linked files above for the groups involved here>
Right now, the BTA is wedged into a rock  crevice near some mushrooms.
<Ahh... really, needs to be moved; for you to start the acclimation/introduction process anew>
As far as water parameters, Temp. is 77F, Salinity 1.025, CA 430, Alk 3.2, Nitrites=0, Nitrates=0, Phos=0,
<... sigh... all chemo-photo/synthates need some of both of the last two... See WWM re this as well>
Ammonia=0. I use Salifert tests for all but Phosphate which is tested with a Hanna photometer, and nitrate which is tested with LaMotte high sensitivity reagents.
Any ideas about how I can help my little BTA?
<As stated, allelopathy and nutrients... Bob Fenner>
 Any advice is greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Re: Sick BTA  1/1/13
I see a lot re: how to reduce nitrates, but not increasing them. Is this as simple as feeding more & reducing skimmer production?
<Ahh, can be; yes. More the former>
In attempting to move the BTA it floated behind the rocks & I am trying to find it again. When I do, you recommend removing from the tank & re-acclimating if I read your response correctly?
Thanks, Doug
<Yes; if possible/practical, take out whatever it's attached to, place in a container underwater and move all to the separate system. BobF>

Re: Rose Bubble Anemone hlth.   9/7/07 I've not changed the set up in any way. The only thing introduced in the last 2 weeks is a small colony of mushroom corals which are usually the other side of the tank. The lighting I have is 2x24" Acadia blue fluorescents and 2x24" white. The tank size is 25 gallons (U.K gallon that is). <Ah, anemones rarely do well in small tanks.> Water parameters are S.G 1.023, <salinity should be closer to 1.025sg> No3 10mg, <doesn't help> Nitrite Nil, Ammonia Nil, Phosphates Nil, Ph 8.2, Calcium 360mg and KH 7-10, temperature is a constant 77.25. <closer to 80 would be better> I do a 25% water change weekly but this is mostly to try and starve the annoying patches of hair algae before they get a grip in the whole tank. I have an Aquaclear 4000 power head directing the flow of water across the tank. The only other inhabitants in the tank are 2 clowns (male & female) and a Banded Coral Shrimp, so the tank is hardly overstocked. <Sure, but I wouldn't add anymore fish.> on the forum suggested that my lighting was incorrect and not powerful enough for a BTA. <That's quite possible. However, even if you had ideal lighting, the tank is still too small for a BTA.> Any suggestions would be grateful as the BTA is truly beautiful when at full health. (If you have any ideas to kill the hair algae that would be appreciated too.) <About all I can suggest at this point is that you get a bigger tank. For the time being, running activated carbon might help. Best,
Sara M.>

Bubble Tip Bleaching...Not Enough Info...Not Enough Light   8/24/06 Hi, <Hello> I have had a BTA for 1 year now. When I purchased it it was a maroon color, I was told it was from the Red Sea region, and that the color would not change. After about 5 months it had significantly changed in color. It was a cream color, now it is completely white. I went back to my LFS and explained the problem. He promptly told me that that was no problem and all I had to do was add phytoplankton every other day. <<Dismal>> So I purchased some and have administered it properly and kept it refrigerated. The outer portion has regained some of its color but the part that fans out and has the bubbles is still white. The bubbles are so small they are almost non-existent. The BTA is housed in a 29 gal. with a PowerGlo light approximately 7 inches from the BTA. <You are very lucky to have kept the BTA that long under those conditions.  Your tank is too small to house anemones and the lighting you are using is no where near enough.  Water parameters can change too fast in a small tank, something anemones do not take well.  Lighting on your tank should have been somewhere near 4 to 5 watts per gallon.> I put an Iodine supplement in the water once per week. This has not seemed to help at all. I feed the BTA weekly with fresh shrimp.  Should I purchase a different light, different plankton supplement, different food or anything else? <Yes, larger tank (minimum of 55 gallon), better lighting, but unlikely your present anemone is going to reverse it's condition.  Read here. http://www.wetwebmedia.com/marine/inverts/cnidaria/anthozoa/bubbletipanemones.htm> Thank you so much for your help. <You're welcome.  James (Salty Dog)>

E. quadricolor concerns 7/17/04 Hey there, I have recently added a bubble tip anemone to my tank 3 weeks ago, and it's habits seem strange compared to the information I have read over the internet.  It seems to thrive in the evening to early morning, but within a couple hours of the lights coming on it shrinks up and its oral disk opens right up and eventually turns inside out (some days).  This has been a constant since about 4or 5 days after it was added to the tank.  I have been feeding it Mysis soaked in Selcon and live phytoplankton every second day, although the poachers get a lot of it. <What you are describing is definitely some kind of stress.  The lighting you list below is probably not enough to maintain this animal, let alone light shock it, so I would suspect a water quality issue.> The first couple of days it moved around the tank, but since then it has been in the same spot about halfway to the surface under an overhang. It is however in a more turbulent area since it is directly behind where the two powerhead flows come together. <Too much current is often an issue, but if the anemone wandered and settled in this spot, I doubt that this is the problem.  Do  keep an eye on it to go on the move again.> Tank Specs: 32 Gallon, 130watt PC 50/50, 2 Powerheads @270GPH/each on opposite sides of the tank, Protein skimmer running 24/7 Temp:81, pH:8.2, nitrite 0, ammonia 0-0.6, salinity: 1.026, 35lbs live rock + 20lbs base rock. <All sounds fine, but your light is a bit low to be keeping anemones.  Also, any detectible ammonia is a problem, I would verify your results on another test kit (preferably another brand).> In the hopes of finding a solution it there is a problem, I'll tell you now the tank is probably overstocked, but since my levels have stayed consistent I have not been overly concerned.  The tank is about 4 months old. Tank Inhabitants: 2 cleaner shrimp 1 fire cleaner shrimp 2 peppermint shrimp 25 various hermits +/ - 25 various snails +/ - 2 ocellaris clownfish (medium) 1 regal tang (small) 1 clarkii clownfish (medium) 1 tube anemone 1 Hawaiian feather duster Blue mushrooms Button polyps Finger leather Plate coral <Waaaayyy too many hermits and snails for such a small tank.  Also, peppermint shrimp can pester desirable anemones.  Button polyps and mushrooms may produce chemicals that will adversely affect the anemone.> The clarkii is only a week new to the tank and has yet to go into the anemone, I added the clarkii hoping that it would keep the poachers away since the 2 ocellaris did not seem to care much for the anemone.  All corals are located well away from the anemone. <Clownfish often take a while to move into an anemone in captivity, particularly if the species don't normally associate in the wild and/or the clowns are captive raised.> Any suggestions would be appreciated.  Thank you, Steve <I would suggest observing the peppermints for irritating behavior or removing them regardless.  I would also consider adding more light.  Using small amounts of carbon occasionally will help reduce the chemical competition from other animals.  Although it doesn't have anything to do with your anemone problem, I would also reduce the numbers of hermits and snails to 1/3 of what you have now and maybe considering giving up the hermits all together (too destructive with minimal benefit, IME).  Best regards.  Adam>