Carpet Nem Question

malx

malx

Active member
For those of you that have Carpet Nems, I have a few questions about them.

1: I fed mine today a small chunk of fresh shrimp from Whole Foods. He devoured it in about 3 minutes but after his mouth remained open for a bit. It's starting to close up but still slightly open. Is this normal?

2: Last night his mouth got really big, almost protruding, and some small brown stringy stuff came out. Then, he shrunk up super tiny. I'm assuming that he was getting rid of some waste and then shrinking because it happened to be the end of the photo period. He opened back up again this morning after the lights came on for a few hours. Now he's fully open.

3: He's got some sand on him from when it blew around due to the 25% W/C I just did. Should I blow it off with a baster or does he have his own way of dealing with it (I'm assuming because they naturally live in the sand they have their own way).

4: Water quality seems to be good. Should I test for PO4?

SG: 35
NO2 = 0
NO3 = 25ppm (I did a 25% W/C just now)
Temp = 80

Let me know what you guys think!

Thanks,
Joey
 
I never kept a carpet before but I kept 5 other types of anemones before. I will say one thing I'd be careful when feeding them chucks of shrimp. If it's too big they will swallow it but it will do more harm than good. Most of my anemones I never feed directly. They might get some food when I feed the tank but I find feeding them isn't necessary. As far as the sand sure why not blast it off. But they should be able to expel it themselves but I would probably do it because I am anal like that


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anthonys51 said:
I never kept a carpet before but I kept 5 other types of anemones before. I will say one thing I'd be careful when feeding them chucks of shrimp. If it's too big they will swallow it but it will do more harm than good. Most of my anemones I never feed directly. They might get some food when I feed the tank but I find feeding them isn't necessary. As far as the sand sure why not blast it off. But they should be able to expel it themselves but I would probably do it because I am anal like that


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Thanks for the tip. I'll cut the shrimp up a bit more for next feeding. Still a bit worried about his mouth being a bit open but will give it a few more hours.

Cheers,
Joey
 
My ritteri anemone does have fat lips sometimes after it eats my clowns will drop food in it and that's only a little mysis shrimp. So I would wait and see


it
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anthonys51 said:
My ritteri anemone does have fat lips sometimes after it eats my clowns will drop food in it and that's only a little mysis shrimp. So I would wait and see


it
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Here's a picture to help.
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that is right after it ate. pretty sure its normal, i work a lot so don't always look at my tank so not sure how long mine takes to go back to normal, but i wouldn't worry. but if you feed to big a piece of shrimp the anemone will throw it out, so just be careful
 
anthonys51 said:
that is right after it ate. pretty sure its normal, i work a lot so don't always look at my tank so not sure how long mine takes to go back to normal, but i wouldn't worry. but if you feed to big a piece of shrimp the anemone will throw it out, so just be careful
Click to expand...

Ok cool. Yeah he ate a few hours ago so I'll just not worry about it. I'll just wait a day and see what happens. In other news he's fully open and showing good color so that's a good sign. I'm new to keeping Nems and I didn't give myself the easiest challenge but when are we really ready for some of these kinds of things anyway :D
 
I added my anemone to my tank after 7 weeks and live aquaria has mine listed as expert. If you keep the water stable doesn't matter how old your tank is


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anthonys51 said:
I added my anemone to my tank after 7 weeks and live aquaria has mine listed as expert. If you keep the water stable doesn't matter how old your tank is


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Good tip. This tank is a tank that I want to keep only one clown, the anemone, and an anemone crab. So I went with a species tank specifically for this :D
 
Update for you. His mouth is closed now and he's also taking on some interesting shapes. I think he was just lazy. This thing is so weird I love it.
 
Nems are my favorite. I can't speak to regular carpet nems but I keep RFAs and mini carpets and they both do the puffy lips thing, as well as the ejecting-brown-stringy-goo thing. I've concluded that they're fine since they do it all the time yet continue to grow and thrive. Mine also get sand off of themselves just fine.


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ReeferDash said:
Nems are my favorite. I can't speak to regular carpet nems but I keep RFAs and mini carpets and they both do the puffy lips thing, as well as the ejecting-brown-stringy-goo thing. I've concluded that they're fine since they do it all the time yet continue to grow and thrive. Mine also get sand off of themselves just fine.


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Yeah good point. His mouth is open again. He's prob just got new tank syndrome and I'm a fat guy syndrome.
 
Looks fine to me. Normal for the mouth to look like that after a big meal. Check out the anemone section there are a lot of posts lately about them. Mine does the same after feeding shrimp.
 
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