BTA looks bad

[myram]

I believe my BTA is on it's way out and I'm not sure if I should pull it now or give it a last chance. It's fully deflated, moved out to the back of the rock out in the open, and just kind of hanging off the rock. It expelled some poop earlier tonight, it's still attached to the rock.

Any ideas?

Steve

 

[bradleym]

How long have you had it, and how long has it been acting that badly?

 

[bLac2]

Not to be crass, but give it a wiff through the ol'factory... That should allow you to gauge if it's on it's way out. Without pictures it is hard to give any advice with your particular situation. Let us know what happens!

 

[myram]

I've had it for about 2 months, and it only recently started acting like this. Maybe within the past week it started moving around a bit, then shrunk down, and this morning it's mouth was hanging open and had like a slime coming off of it.
I can take a picture later today when I get out of work.

Steve

 

[myram]

That is a picture I just took, it's about the size of a quarter.

A month ago he was 6-8" around, fully out, and looking great.

He moved today, still attached to the rock, but looks like crap.

Steve

 

[james-lee]

Give it time my rbta does this from time to time and fully inflates the next day. Also what are your water parameters? To me the fact that it moced into the loght it is prossibly trying to find an are with more light and flow. The nouth opening wide is normal when they deflate to expel waste. Color looks good so just be patient. There are times when an anemone looks like its about to nuke and comes back to being normal the next day when its found a suitable spot.

 

[Cptn Spaulding]

Excess nitrates seem to be the biggest killer of nems in terms of water quality I have noticed. The color looks great though. Is it a green bta or is it as blue/teal as the picture suggests?

Things to look for are loss of color on the foot or the tentacles and a huge gaping mouth that won't go away.

 

[myram]

That picture is from about a month ago. About 6" around, and seemed to be happy.

Steve

 

[myram]

I did change lights about a month ago, from PC to LED............so the tank is a bit brighter. It did move around a little after I did that, but seemed to find it's spot and looked good. Just this past weekend it started looking like crap, and then yesterday it started to move again and is now under a rock overhang.

Steve

 

[myram]

He getting bigger in the body today, but the tentacles are still small and deflated.

I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt and leave him in there and hope for the best.

Steve

 

[phasezero]

I agree with Cptn Spaulding about nitrates. I bought a RBTA and ended up putting it in my 20g nano for my clown. It's health degraded over a period of 2 months. At it's very worse it shriveled to the size of a coke can with tentacles almost non existent. The first picture isn't even close to it's worse. I ended up moving it to my stable 55g where nitrates were <5 compared to 20+ in my nano tank. In conjunction with the move, i also started feeding it a small shrimp slice every other day rather than a chunk of shrimp every 2 weeks.

August 2011

October 2011

January 2012

 

[Aaarrrggg]

It doesn't look so bad in the pic; seen a LOT worse!

 

[myram]

He's still not doing good, but he's not looking any worse today either.

He's stopped moving around, had some poop coming out when I got home, so maybe he's coming out of his funk and getting back to normal.

Steve