Crispa deflating every afternoon

[ThRoewer]

As the title says, my crispa is deflating every afternoon, usually between 2 pm and 6 pm
It starts coming back up a few hours later and by the morning it is usually back up.
On this tank the lights come on at 9am and go out at midnight. What's in there on SPS is doing OK - they have usually decent polyp extension.
The light is a Kessil A360WE and it is ramped up and down slowly.

I do not think that the anemone is sick - no expelling of zoox, no open mouth, and the deflating is like clockwork always around the same time.
Also this is going on now for almost 2 months.
At first I suspected that it was the temperature, but after I added a fan chiller the temperature stayed stable, yet the deflating continued.
I did a 20% water change - no change.

I suspect a bit that it could be the pH going up and down, but so far I couldn't measure the pH.

So the questions are:
1. could it be pH related? (will set up a monitor this week)
2. what else could cause this cyclic deflating?

 

[Pericyte]

I've been waiting for someone else to answer, but in short, yes, I do think pH shifts could cause major problems for the anemone. pH is a logarithmic scale that can be thought of as the concentration of hydrogen ions (moles/liter). Going from pH 8 to pH 7 is a ten-fold increase in hydrogen ions. Why is this important: it stresses invertebrates. While the ocean varies from pH 7.5-8.4, the ocean has become more acidic because of rising global temperatures, and an increase in CO2 in the atmosphere. There's an interesting article in The Scientist July 2016 that talks about the ocean becoming 30 percent more acidic in the last 200 years. This is thought To stress on calcifying organisms, causing much of the reef bleaching you may have heard about, but I strongly suspect it affects other delicate organisms as well.

In our tanks, high temperatures and low oxygenation can lead to more CO2 in the water causing the pH to drop. Also breakdown of extra food/waste can lower pH. Extra oxygenation, buffer, adding macro algae are probably all things that can help balance your pH.

(You may already know this, just good information for the forum IMO.)

All that aside, I am not sure if this is what is happening to your anemone, but let us know if correcting the pH helps!

 

[nemguy]

These types of anemones don't like parameter changes when I kept sps thanks that everything was kept constant I was able to keep crispa and malu without them deflating I've had trouble keeping them now in my tanks where salinity and temp and ph sometime fluctuate I plan to put a few in my 300 gallon once it stables out to see if I can get them long term again try getting your parameters as stable as possible see if it helps or maybe the corals could be releasing something at that time the anemone doesn't like hope this helps


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[MarinaP]

Try decreasing your light output by 30% between 1-6pm.

 

[Pericyte]

Any updates?

 

[ThRoewer]

Light seems not to have any impact. I went to the lowest setting on intensity you can go to with the Kessil A360 and turned color totally off so that it was just blue - but no change.

 

[ThRoewer]

I tested the water parameters (excluding pH as I fried my Apex and needed the new unit on the main system):

NO3: 50 ppm (Salifert)
PO4: >0.61 ppm (Hanna HI 736 ULR) (Phosphorus >200 ppb) (likely somewhere between 1 and 3 ppm)
Alk: 9.4 dKH / 3.3 Meq/L (Red Sea)
Ca: 475 ppm (Red Sea)
Mg: 1460 ppm (Red Sea)

I turned the dosing pump of for now, but that didn't show much effect either. The Acropora, and Pocolipora have great polyp extension but don't grow too much.
The zoas started looking bad as well (like melting), but the paleys still look good.

By now the anemone is not inflating much anymore.

As a last resort I plan to make a large water change of 30 to 40 gal (System volume is about 50 gal) this weekend to see if that helps.

I will also start carbon dosing on that system since that seems to start working on my main system now.

 

[MarinaP]

There is nothing in your water that would cause deflation. Have you considered treating the anemone with antibiotics?

 

[taylor t]

I agree, maybe try getting ready to treat, pull it into the TT, only don't use meds and see how it fares with 100% water changes everyday made the same way everyday, aged 24 hours aerated for a few days first, before using meds. Maybe see by day 3 or 4 if it looks better with no meds, maybe try feeding then? If it looks the same or worse after that period of time, maybe try using meds? I don't know, just a thought. They don't seem to melt as fast as a gig, but for me seem to have a slower recovery time, if this makes sense. Best of luck.

 

[ThRoewer]

I don't think it is sick. I've seen sick ones and they behaved and looked different. Also, this is going on for 2 months now and If it was infected and sick it should be gone by now.
Further more, unlike with giganteas I never had any success in treating crispas.

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[taylor t]

There is nothing in your water that would cause deflation. Have you considered treating the anemone with antibiotics?

I don't think it is sick. I've seen sick ones and they behaved and looked different. Also, this is going on for 2 months now and If it was infected and sick it should be gone by now.
Further more, unlike with giganteas I never had any success in treating crispas.

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That's why I'd pull it into the tt and do water changes only, before treating. I haven't had success treating them either, the couple times I tried. Even though your water is "perfect" there may be something you can't test or account for. It's worth a try, otherwise continue to just watch it go down.

 

[OrionN]

Do you change water much? I find that my anemone usually do poorly unless I change water regularly. The way I keep my tank, Nitrate never detectable but the tank need water change nevertheless. I am sure that there are micro nutrients that raise to toxic level with no water change. Either that or micro nutrients that got used up and need replenish.

 

[ThRoewer]

In that tank I was a bit lazy with changing water. Though when I did a quite sizable water change a few weeks ago there was not the slightest sign of improvement.

I'm preparing right now a nearly full water change to see if that brings any improvement.

With my giganteas drastic water changes would always result in an instant improvement. But then again, giganteas as tidal zone inhabitants are well adapted to rapidly fluctuating water parameters.

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[CoralsAddiction]

The way I keep my tank, Nitrate never detectable but the tank need water change nevertheless. I am sure that there are micro nutrients that raise to toxic level with no water change.

+1. My nitrates and phosphates are never detectable but somehow there's multiple nuisance algae types in my tank when I skip regular water changes. Did 25% WC today.

 

[ThRoewer]

The 42 is actually the only of my tanks where I have next to no nuisance algae (except for some in the Cheatomorpha chamber of the sump).

On the other hand, my main system where I do frequent water changes is plagued with some unsightly fuzz algae which catch detritus and make the tanks look dirty. Only the sump tank is clean due to the two diadema urchins there. Unfortunately those are too big now for a tank with corals - I would either need babies or something different with the same effectiveness.

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[CoralsAddiction]

I really like urchins because they are great for algae control. But I also agree that sometimes they are not suited for reef tanks especially with corals frags. They either knock them down/over or attach the frags to their body like accessories.

 

[ThRoewer]

The issue with my urchins was that with increasing size they got less precise in avoiding corals and sometimes "milled" just over them. Back then I had some rather tiny frags of higher value so I rather took them out. But by now the frags are larger and there is now a good deal of annoying algae that need to be taken care of. The main reason why I need baby urchins is that they can get in all the right spaces.
I'm also planning on adding more snails and hermits and maybe also some tigertail cucumbers...

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[Dan]

I would be interested to see your water chemistry parameters several times throughout the day. Including after the nem deflates. Please include pH and maybe oxygen readings. Theorizing possibilities:
1). pH fluctuations and not enough buffer capacity to offset.
2). Low oxygen due to increased metabolism of other inhabitants.
3). When the other corals perk up (increased metabolism), they give off "stuff" that causes the nem to react negatively.
4). Urchins poking the nem (or something else bothering it).

 

[taylor t]

I would be interested to see your water chemistry parameters several times throughout the day.

No amount of experience and resources will give you the ability to test for some things, some of which may or may not be affecting an anemone in compromised health in an environment that's been neglected. There are just too many variables in every situation. A change of level "X" may or may not matter, because level "Y" may be different, or Level "Z" may be present. And there's a HECK of a lot more things in salt than we have letters for.

IMO, there's only 2 roads to this if it's going on months with no improvement. Watch it wither, or try to treat it (without meds) in a TT with 100% changes every day. Changing the DT water 100% once, will only have it's own issues over time, some of which you may not see if things are relatively healthy. I'm certain, if I did that to either of my tanks, I'd end up with a near crash. My tanks rely on the dirt. My anemones look like crap for days if I change too much water at once. Others, may have no problem doing this because they pamper their tanks and the system is used to high volume export, or frequent export, and their tank has adapted to a certain chemical/bio makeup from this.

With all you've got going on in your fish room, I'm not sure why you wouldn't try this approach. It should just be another "potato in the pot".

 

[ThRoewer]

Well, I did a 20 gallon water change a few days ago and there is an improvement to see. It's still too early to say, but the water change definitely had an effect. I will do 10 gallon (~25%) water changes every week and see how things develop.
I was a bit lazy with this tank since at first everything seemed to be fine.