Anemones

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mbu man

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hi,just invested in another nem,it didntcome attached to a rock,so i put him in my tank yesterday afternoon with a piece of rock underneath him in a calm part of the tank so that he could foot himself. thought that he had done and just now he blew off round the tank. how long does this take? or is he not happy??
 
What type of nem?
tank size?
Age of tank?
tank stats?
inhabitants?
lighting?

sorry, we need a little more info :good:

although a word of caution, if he is floating make sure your powerheads are covered :crazy:

Seffie x

:fish:
 
What type of nem?
tank size?
Age of tank?
tank stats?
inhabitants?
lighting?

sorry, we need a little more info :good:

although a word of caution, if he is floating make sure your powerheads are covered :crazy:

Seffie x

:fish:
white malawi
300litres (4ft wide)
2 and a half years old
tanks stats are all good
2 white t5s,2 aqua blue t5s and 2 blue moon t5s.
i have plenty of other nems but they all came already attached to rock
 
a healthy anemone should attach within a few hours, often less, when placed in a good tank. If the anemone is damaged when it is removed from the original tank and bagged up, it might not settle for a week or more due to the damage done to the base.
Make sure there isn't too much water movement but keep the water really good. Put a sponge or something over the intake of filters so they don't suck it up.
 
do you mean a white malu nem?
if so, dont buy it. They should be a brown/green/pink colour often with purple tips. Puer white ones are bleached and unhealthy 99% of the time

topImage.jpg


thats a malu in the bottom corner.

They need very very strong lighing, super stable water params. Id reccomend you start with a bubble tip
 
^^Only white Malu's are available up my way. I know of a few people who have had long-term success with them when staying white. I have just got one myself (off-white, more cream in colour) and thus far so good (after changing to Maxijet pumps to allow me to put sponges over them without loosing too much flow, thus protecting the nem). they are a harder nom to keep though, mainly due to their light requirements and rock-sand border line preference for positioning...

However, if it is a Malu, you plain and simply don't have enough light there. They need 6T5's in a shallow tank, with 150W halides usually working out a more cost effective option to get their lighting requirements. Now, a 4ft tank will be over 18" high, so Halides in your case will be essential, a pair of 250W lamps being minimum realistically :nod:

All the best
Rabbut

EDIT to add, I agree with ben, you will likely be better off returning it unless you have £500 lying around for a very quick lighting upgrade...
 
im sure ive read somewhere that theres no such thing as a pure white and healthy nem. Theres some naturally cream one iirc. But pure white = bleached.

Someone got torn apart on another forum by a nem expert over something to do with this subject.

BLEACHING

Bleaching is a general term given to the loss of an anemone’s zooxanthellae; so named due to the washing out of colour with the most severe cases the anemone appearing white. The term bleaching is accepted as the mass expulsion of zooxanthellae. This can happen for a number of reasons - mainly due to some sort of environmental stress. This covers excessive temperature changes, insufficient lighting, excessive lighting, excessive salinity change, etc. Physical stress can also cause bleaching.

The most commonly observed bleached anemone is Heteractis crispa. These animals arrive in your LFS an aesthetic white, but this is never their true colour; they should be a fawn/tan colour, or less commonly pink, green or silver/grey.

A supply of energy/nutrition for an anemone comes from the sugars made in the process of photosynthesis by the zooxanthellae. It doesn't take much to work out that if there are no zooxanthellae, there is a reduction in food. Where there are no other nutrition/energy routes, the anemone slowly starves to death, but in an attempt to survive they absorb their own mass, and hence the animal shrinks. One of the most striking example of this is the consumption of an anemones own tentacles. In bleached animals, you often find unusually short tentacles when compared to healthy specimens.

Bleaching can be reversed, but it takes a long time and commitment by the aquarist. In the first instance, excellent water quality should be provided. Lighting should be of the optimal strength, although initially, it would be best to acclimate the animal to stronger light over a period of time. Feeding should be regular, say every other day, and should only be in small quantities (10mm cube for an animal of less than 300mm say). Flow should be restricted slightly in case the animal has trouble attaching/feeding.

Over time, if one is lucky, a gradual change in colour should occur. This is the recovery of the zooxanthellae and is a very good sign. The colour change may be uniform, or it may be sporadic across the animal, but eventually, if all conditions are right, the entire animal will become "as new".
 
OK, no doubt a white nem may be a bleached on, but I find it hard to believe a white nem receiving no supplemental feeds to still be happy three years after introduction, as in one keeper's case...

We also have to bear in mind that all animals will show slightly different colours under different lights, so this white nem may well be cream if under warm looking lights ATM...

Not trying to argue, but we can't say it's bleached without taking into account the conditions it's in ATM ;)

One thing we do agree on though ATM is that they need good strong light, and I'd argue to OP's lights aren't in that racket :sad:

All the best
Rabbut
 
nah, i wasnt trying to argue. Was just saying...unless you really really know your stuff. Dont buy a white-ish coloured one.
 
I thought they were white because they lacked the algae in them, and compensated for not needing so much light to photosynthesize by eating more food than say, a bubble tip which relies more on light..?
 
Yup. Malus are definitely one of the most aggressive nems and tend to feed more than they photosynthesize
 
Actually malus are pretty much on par with the other Heteractis regarding stings. They pale in comparison to Stichodactyla (carpets), Cryptodendrum (pizzas), and to several other genera rarely kept in aquaria. All photosynthetic anemones seem to be capable of surviving on photosynthesis alone (in strong enough light), but they all will eat whenever they get the chance and should be fed regularly in my opinion, so that they have access to fats and proten which cannot be photosynthesized.

White malus are fairly common in the trade unfortunately. There have been successes, with surviving specimens turning a cream colour. They should be placed in the shade and fed small bits of food at night when it won't be stolen from them.
 
They should be placed in the shade and fed small bits of food at night when it won't be stolen from them.

You don't know my clown :p She will nick food even after lights out, so time of feeding likely won't make much difference for me, I'll have to distract her with something meaty and "free swimming" at the opposite end of the tank anyway :lol:

My best info on Malus thus far are High-light, medium flow, medium sting, and vary on feeding requirements and are amongst the more difficult of the Anemones to sustain in captivity...

It's all well and good placing a nem somewhere, but at the end of the day, it's a nem. You in most cases find that they walk off somewhere else anyway, though mine has more or less stayed put... Place it somewhere with lower flow when you introduce it, so it can get it's foot attached to something, then let it find it's own spot after that :good:

All the best
Rabbut
 
By no means am I trying to sound like Mr Know It All, but before buying my Rose BTA, I researched into its needs and built a cave where it could bury its foot in deep (where it can also retreat into at night or if needs be), a rimed rock area where it can lie its face out onto which was just underneath a passage of water flow from a powerfull powerhead and mid to high lighting. My nem actually hasnt moved from that spot.

It also came unattached, I turned the powerhead off to let it attach (took about an hour) then I switched it back on. As it was just under the flow of water, It wasnt blown away.

I have had some problems, maybe just general nem problems. However, touch wood, it will continue to stay put :)

A few minutes after putting the nem into my reef.

marinetank12.jpg
 

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