BTA anemone predator?

[davidc]

Background:
I bought him from the best fish store in town a couple of weeks ago, and
it's looked healthy up until now. I put him in a prime spot initially, and
it roamed around as expected. It ended up hiding under the edge of a rock
near the bottom, but it would inflate and stretch upward into the light.
The last few days, however, it has been receding further under the rock and
today it was upside down. I gently moved it out of its hiding spot into a
good location.

Problem:
I discovered that it is now shaped like a donut, with its 'mouth' way larger
than normal and going all the way through its body. Its almost as if
something ate through the middle of the anemone. Also, many of the
tentacles have tiny holes in the ends. I can see its stomach tissue from
the top and the bottom.

Other creatures in the tank are:
1 smaller E. quadricolor (rescued from LFS, and well attached to rock - had
it for 6 weeks)
2 small maroon clowns (they are always very interested in both anemones)
1 cleaner shrimp
1 yellow tang
1 mandarin
corals: various zooanthids, digitatas, m. caps, acro, xenia, yellow
toadstool, and recently colt, ricordea, and mushroom frags
I did have a peppermint shrimp, but it vanished days after going in the
tank.

The tank is 72G with plenty of light and flow, and water conditions are
always good (a little warm at times). I keep all the 'soft' creatures on
one end of the tank, and all the SPS on the other end. The anemone settled
near the middle.

The strange thing is, this anemone is still alive and colorful. It attached
a part of its battered foot to the rock, and it moves its tentacles around.
It can't inflate them, though, because they have holes in them. Is there a
chance it will survive? I'd hate to get rid of it without giving it a
chance, but what's the use if something likes the way it tastes? Did my
clownfish make this gaping hole?

One picture is of the bottom of the anemone, and in it you can see its
bright white stomach tissue and the light brown ruffles of what I assume is
the inside of the stomach tissue. In the other picture the anemone is
upright, and you can see it is still very colorful but its tentacles can't
inflate properly.

Anyone know of anemone predators? All advice is appreciated!

Thanks!
===>DavidC

[davidc]

this anemone is a fighter! it's actually attached to the rock now, and it has 'patched up' some of the tentacles with holes and they are inflating a little now. That is amazing for only a few hours!

Now if I could just keep the clownfish away so it could have some peace...even now they are trying to host in it!

I've noticed that in addition to the huge hole straight through the middle of its body, it also has a few small hole in the side of its foot.

What could have done this to it?

[tdwyatt]

Hmmm... ... I am assuming you have adequate conditions for the anemone in the tank and adequate lighting to which the anemone was acclimatized...


Make sure that the appearance is truly as you think it is, looking for obvious tears, etc before undergoing the treatment. Anemones can sometimes look really bad when in fact, they have just deflated and may appear to be badly damaged as part of their normal cycle of inflation and deflation, particularly if there was little acclimatization prior to final placement. It is normal for them to shrink down to almost nothing, then reinflate with SW at the current conditions as they go through their own acclimatization process.


If there is to be any chance of recovery to what appears to be damage in the photograph, I would suggest treating the remaining anemone as if it were a cutting for fragging. Set up a hospital tank for it (rubbermaid) with some water from a water change. Place NO sand in it, but some rubble and an overhang suitable for foot placement, if necessary, a piece of 4 to 6" diameter PVC will do, but you need some cured LR for biofiltration. Place a heater, a powerhead to generate circular (around the edge) current, and, if you have it, a MH light set on 4 hrs photoperiod (if you don't have that, pick up a 6.5kK LOA spotlight and leave it on for 4 hrs a day, slowly ramping up to 10 to 12 hrs a day). Include a thermometer and watch for temp variations.

The anemone is to be the only specimen in the tank, NO ANEMONEFISHES.

Before placing the specimen in the hospital tank, place it in a shallow container with about 5cm depth of tank water and use a magnifying glass to look for parasites on the surface of the specimen and in open wounds. If they are present, they will be difficult to find, usually of the same color as the tissue on which they are feeding. These most often present as either round worms, segmented worms, or flat worms, but my also include some unspecified parasite. If present, dip the specimen in fresh water for NO LONGER THAN 10 seconds with swishing to dislodge as many of the parasites as possible, then immediately place in a separate SW pan for about 1 hour of recovery. Observe the specimen again for parasites, and if they are still noticeably visible, try another dip, then place the specimen in the hospital tank (parasites or not.) If they were present, check the specimen again after few days of recovery, and retreat. FW dips are VERY hard on anemone, this treatment alone may be enough to finish off the specimen, but if there are parasites, there is no real alternative, as most of the treatments on the market will kill anemone as well as the parasites.


If there are no parasites, look for necrotic tissue on the anemone, this will present as shriveled gray tissue at the edges of tears (or ragged edges, don't be concerned about the holes for now.) Using a very sharp pair of surgical scissors, trim away any tissue like this including a 5mm margin and dip the anemone in a Lugol's bath in salt water (see archive for the 40 drop dip), again, no longer than 10 seconds. Place the specimen in the hospital tank. If you're lucky, then the specimen will recover, but it is just as likely to not survive this regimen of treatments. Healthy specimens can be sliced into up to 4 pieces so long as they include all 4 sections of the radial symmetry (tentacles, oral disc, mouth, column and mesenteries, pedal disc) and recover as 4 new specimens, but again, this is with healthy well0fed specimens.

There is a chance that thes specimen may have been exposed to widely varying salinity conditions, and may not survive, Without a good history, it will be difficult to adequately treat this specimen or predict the chances of recovery.

I hope this helps, sorry to hear about this unfortunate occurance.

[wanareef]

At frist, it looked like it was spliting but it's not. Anoemone's are very fragile animals and just my moving them from the LFS to your tank, the change in salinty and getting use to a new enviroment is very stressful, especially being moved again from finding a spot under a rock.

IMO- I would not move it and stress it even more, but do a WC and make sure it has a little flow over it. Here's a great site on rose's -http://www.freewebs.com/karenssaltwater/

[davidc]

Thanks for your answers - I will do some closer inspection of the anemone for parasites and necrotic tissue. It's still alive this morning, still attached to the rock, and still moving and inflating some tentacles.

I have a 18X18 refugium with 9" of water, and it has no creatures in it. It is lighted by a 1400 lumens outdoor floodlight. Will that do for a hospital? I could change it for a better bulb if I need to.


I really don't think this is a simple tear - this thing looks like a pipe! It's as if something ate the middle of the anemone straight through the foot. There are also a couple of small 'tears' on the remaining part of the foot. The pictures posted are what it looked like after it 'pulled itself together' some, but when I first picked it up yesterday I could see my hand through a 1.5" diameter hole.

I'm confident this isn't 'anemone meltdown'. The lighting is about the same as from the good LFS (Cappuccino Bay), and there isn't anything funny with my water. The other E. quadricolor I rescued is recovering nicely from poor conditions at the not-so-good LFS, and it's been in there this whole time. The SPS at the other end of the tank are thriving, and the nearby ricordea are thriving. This anemone looked great until the other day, and it's already done the 'internal water change' thing.

Is it possible that my snails ate through it to get at food it had eaten? Or some other hungry creature ate through it to get at food it had eaten? The only thing I have that is carnivorous is Ilyanassa obsoleta snails, 1 blueleg hermit, 1 scarlet hermit, 1 cleaner shrimp, 2 maroon clowns. A peppermint shrimp went missing a few weeks back - could it be the culprit?

wanareef - nice link, thanks!

[davidc]

Well, it's still alive. It moved itself off the rock where I had placed it and onto the sand. I moved it into a small in-tank refuge that is moderately lit with a reduced flow.

I can still clearly see its guts, but half of it looks fairly normal.

Now it appears to be releasing a brown stringy material from the holes in its tentacles (about half of them still have holes). I assume this is zooxanthellae => bad.

I haven't found any living creatures on it, but I'm wondering if this is something that a bristleworm could have done. I have some small bristleworms in the tank, and the anemone was on the sand for a while. Shouldn't be any large ones because of the age of the tank. Plus I never saw any until I got some algae from a fellow reefer about 2 months ago.

If not for the guts hanging out in the middle, I would think it is splitting. This is so weird! If it was going to die, wouldn't it be mushy by now?

EDIT: if one half continues to worsen, and the other half continues to improve, should I cut off the bad half and try to save the god half?

[davidc]

Well, bad news - but not unexpected.


Looks like the injury was too much to recover from. Half of the anemone started 'melting down', and it was only a few hours until it spread over the entire anemone. What's weird is the one half was doing ok until the very end, but it obviously wouldn't have recovered so I decided it was time to end it.

I'm still very curious to know what could have done this, because I would like to keep another anemone. The one I already have seems to be doing great - it's been there the whole time.

I think the next one I buy will be already firmly attached to a rock.