anem question

[svynx]

I have a carpet anem. Looks pink for the most part. I've had it for about a month now and it's been doing well. I had to have the lights off for the past 3 days because of an algae problem. I turned the lights back on this morning. Every day that the lights were out, I checked on the few coral and the anem that I have, and except for the coral closing a little, things looked normal. Today, when it came time to feed the tank, the anem was spread open as far as I have ever seen it. I could alse see through parts of it. Looks like a coral skeleton, even though anems don't have any. Is this normal? Possibly splitting?
Cheers

 

[davez104]

No idea on the Anemone, but maybe you need to look for the source of the algae, not just try to kill it. If you leave the lights run their normal cycle the algae will grow enough to consume the nutrients that obviously present in your tank. Left to their own devises tanks will allways reach an equilibrium of some kind, just not allways the way we desire. If you then find the source of nutrients and eliminate that, the algae will dissapear on it's own. I've never been a fan of prolonged "lights out" to remove algae.

Sorry if you knew this allready.
Dave.

 

[svynx]

I know where the source was..an ineffective skimmer. That problem has been solved. I switched to a bigger sump as well so I've got more water volume. I asked a number of people if there was something that I could do about the algae, and was told that turning the lights out for a few days works pretty well, especially since I don't have much in the tank that requires light.

Anyone else have an idea as to what is going on with the anemone? It looked great this morning when the lights came back on. I fed him today as well when I got home from work. A pretty big piece of krill. It was gone in about a min ( I watched to make sure it was eating).

 

[elegance coral]

The zooxanthellae inside the anemone most likely died while the lights were off. Then the anemone discharged the dead zooxanthellae leaving it with a clear appearance. Now there is not enough zooxanthellae to provide it with the nourishment it requires, so it is expanding as large as it can to capture as much light as possible. It won't help much though. If you keep feeding it and keep the lights on a normal cycle, the zooxanthellae should return.

 

[svynx]

Gotcha. Thanks elegance. That's the info that I was looking for. I'll keep an eye on it for a while to make sure that it gets healthy again.