How do you know when an Anemone is dying?

Underwaterfragglerock

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:dunno: Is my anemone dead? It was doing beautifully for so long. I will post two pics in a day or so: one of how it was and now is. It seems to have closed up, lost most, if not all, of its color, and it has shed all this slime into the tank. Help? :/
 
IF its possible to lift the nenny to the surface then try and smell it. If the smell nearly blows your head off then its time to get rid. if it still smells like normal tank water then it might just be closing down for a period. Nennys can go through this stage but i would monitor it very clsoely, when these things do die off they can do so very fast and cause your tank all sorts of trouble.
 
yeah I would do what navarre said immediately..nothing will pollute a
tank faster than a dead anenome. it can pollute your tank in less than an
hour after dying,Ive heard of people losing everything in the tank,
including the bacteria bed.
 
Ive heard of people losing everything in the tank,
including the bacteria bed

Eek!

How is your anemone now? If it does die it will serve it right for killing your fish! :angry: Not good for you though...

Mine looked a bit worse for wear yesterday morning but about half an hour after the lights came on it went from a shrivelled blob to its usual perky self...
 
:sick: Teh smell darn near knocked me over!!! I removed it and flushed it. But it left white slime flying all over the tank. And there are cmear marks where it use to be. What should Ido? Antyhign? :dunno:

And why did my anemone die??? I have two condy anemones and a flower anemone doing great in the same tank. Plus, I had (can't seem to find it) an Anemone Crab in that thing all of the time, and at first a Sebae Clown hosted it and lately two Percula Clowns have hosted it. I also tried giving it brine shrimp once a week or so. You can read my lights below. What more can an anemone ask for???? :-(
 
hey underwaterfragglerock Im glad to hear you got him out of your tank.
he was definitely on his way out.
I would suggest doing a water change at least twice as much as your
usual, then retest your water.the same thing once happened
to me. I had a green carpet and a bubble tip in the same tank for about a
year,the bubbletip shrunk-up,eventually died, but the carpet continued to
thrive.I guess they just die for unknown reasons. closely watch your other
inverts to make sure they werent affected.
 
Thanks, Hyrookin. Will do on those changes.

I just read up on Condy Anemones and as it turns out, they can kill other anemones. Perhaps that is what hapenned. It was SUCH a wonderful anemone. Such a shame. :/
 
You would be suprised at the amount of chemical warfare that goes on in a reef tank. We can easily see if a fish is getting aggressive etc, but corals and inverts are a different thing altogether.
Sweeper tenticles, spores, chemicals, these happend in front our very eyes and at night when its dark. Its very important to try to research your i nverts as much as your fish, some corals are far more aggressive than others and the same applies to anemones as well. I have a galaxia coral for example, a lovely peaceful looking coral that is a nice gren colour and appears pretty innocent. At night however, this wee beasty sends out long sweeper tenticles into the water flow and anything within 6" radius of these will get badly stung. :crazy: :grr: :sly:
My Sarcopyton was on the recieving end of this and closed down completely. I could not see what the rouble was, water perameters were good, and everything looked healthy. I eentually saw these tencticles for myself sweeping the leather coral at night. I moved the galaxia immediately to a place out of harms way from anything. It took a week for the Sarcophyton to recover and shed its skin. Corals are relatively easy to place as they have no means of moving to attack anything, anemones however as not so easy. They will move in for the kill and can do so pretty quickly too.

Condy nennys pack a powerful punch and can do real nasty damage to other nennys. Bubble tips and carpet nennys though have equally potent stings i think though. Is there any sing of damage to the other nennys?
 
As an after thought, i thought i would add this.
It might not be your fault at all, Anemones are very very hard to keep (condys are among the hardiest).
For every anemone that survives transit from the reef to a shop, a further 10 die on the way :*) For each 1 that lives more than a month in an aquarium, another 10 die within that month. :look: :no:
I see hobbiests all the time saying how they have successfully kept a nenny for 5 years, 10 years even, however the life expectancy of anemones in the wild is remarkable, 100s if not 1000s of years! In fact it might even be longer, scientists have yet to find an aging process for these remarkable creatures.
Why are these creatures so hard to keep? Well they are bags of water after all and this means that the water quality needs to be perfect in 99% of cases. Light needs to be very strong as they get most of their energy from the sun. They are extremely effienct at converting the tiny bits of nutrients they collect into energy to live upon. They need both light and nutrients to thrive, the light gives the zooanthid algea that lives within the nenny enough energy to break down the particles of food it needs to feed itself. If any of these 3 requirements deteriorate then the anemone will begin to suffer. Very little is still known about these cretures and what makes it so sad is that fish shops sell these highly specialised inverts to people without concern for their welbing or the persons ability to take care of such an animal. Money is made and this is why they will still get ripped out of the oceans in huge numbers and why so many will die and never ever make it more than 1 month furhter into their lives. even less will make it to a year.. and when we consider how many will make 20 years? not many at all.. and even then this is only the equivilant of a newborn baby in their own natural lifespans. :no:

Dont get me wrong, im not having a dig at anyone who has one or wants to own one. But i do want to make people more aware before they make a such a purchase. I have owned an anemone myself and eventually gave it back to the shop due the problems it caused me and the tank.. And even now, i think that if i wnet to a shop and found a nenny that was in poor shape, my instinct would be to try and save it.. this in due course means the shop gets more money and orders more nennys.. a viscious circle i guess :*) Anyone who reads this please all i ask is that you be aware of the needs for these creatures before you buy.

Cheers for listening... um reading :*)
 
woah.

I guess I should be happy for the time I had the anemone, which was three months. Also, I am glad that you mentioned taking anemones back to the store because I am going to take back my Condys ASAP. And AWESOME info on these creatures! Rock on! :cool:
 
Thanks for that Fraggle :*)

As i said, im not trying to condem anyone for keeping them, my mainaim is to educate people. There are many out othere who simple dont know the facts and if they did then they probably would purchase one thats all. :)
 

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