Current tank, anenome blues.

[MammothReefer]

I'm at a loss here and looking for some random suggestions, maybe I'm over looking something.

My current setup for some reason is having a HECK of a hard time supporting anemones. I've never had this issue in the past, I've had tanks where my anemones grew massive, and others where they split like crazy. This tank.. Outside of LTA's. I can't seem to keep anything alive. My parameters are rather stable. I have great flow, strong lighting. My husbandry pattern is good.. all the standard stuff.. Weekly water changes, automated dosing, and top off. Running, carbon & rowa.

My lighting is t5/halide combo over one tank, and led over the other.
Flow is randomized with a combination of tunzee's and vortechs.

I have 2 tanks connected to one sump, one high flow for sps, the other low flow for my LPS. Neither have been able to support BTAs, or Ritteri, and while I was able to keep some rather nice LTAs..they wandered to much and go to big to quick so I sold them. I've tried both captive, and wild (Btas) with no luck, and 2 wild crispas the first one didn't ship so great, but the shipped fine, but I had no luck with it either.

I'm a moderate feeder, feed nori/pellets daily, oyster feast, and roti feast a couple times a week and I feed the lps ever other week.

My params as they sit now (variations to show target range)
Sal 1.025 (1.026)
Temp 78 (76-79)
Calc 380 (450)
Alk 8.1 (8-8.5 )
Ph 8.2 (8-8.3)
Mag - 1440 (1350)
Phos .11 (just changed out rowa last nite should drop back to .03-.04)
Nitrate - 1 - .5 (never then 2.5, usually around .5-.1)


I'm at a loss. I'd really like to get a magnifica again, but I'd like to figure out what is wrong first. I have both LPS, SPS, and 2 softies (clove polyps, and 1 small thing of zoas) growing just fine. While my nem attempts fail within a week is beyond me...if I can't keep a BTA alive, something is just off. I had a few small amazing ones for a few months, but I ended up having to keep them in cups and spot feed them just to keep them going. I ended up just getting rid of them.

Anybody seen this weirdness before. My tank (in this iteration) is a bit over a year old now.

 

[dirtyBit]

I'm sorry you’re having trouble keeping nems. I'm no expert as I've only had mine for a little less than 3 months. I have a Ritteri and it has been doing well. More than anything my nem seems sensitive to light conditions. How have you acclimated your nems to your lighting? I once did a lights out for 2 days (because of Dinos) and on the second day my nem jumped off its’ rock onto the sand. I immediately uncovered my tank and over the next few days to a week I started to turn more lights on. It now has climbed back up on its’ rock and is doing great. It has a hard time "getting up" in the morning. it's usually open at night and when morning come (before lights kick on) it starts to close itself. After a while it gets used to the light and starts to open up.

 

[Cliff519]

I'm just guessing, but it might be something related to how you acclimate them to the tank

I've drip acclimated mine over a 3 hour period. Anemones can find it tough to adapt to a new tank. At least that has been my experiance

 

[MarinaP]

What behavior do they exhibit once you place them in the tank (hiding, deflating, moving, inverting, etc)? How do they look at the time of death (melted, disintegrated in chunks, etc)?

 

[BluespotLady]

If they are dying within a week, they may just not be healthy to begin with.

 

[MarinaP]

Also, see this thread

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1803380

 

[MammothReefer]

I can see a couple nems being not healthy, but it's starting to look like a pattern at this point. Thanks for the link. Looking threw it I'm not seeing anything that stands out. I've tried 4 btas (3 I got rid of as they started to decline after a lengthy process to get them to recover) 1 goo'd, and 2 crispas (both goo'd within a week.. thought the first was bad shipping, the second .. I have no clue.) and I had 4 different LTA's that were fine.. 1 even recouped from a Power head incident but I removed them from the tank as they wandered to much and were getting to big for how I had my tank set up at the time. (note this is over the course of a year or so, not all at the same time haha)