Gigantea Advice.

[MammothReefer]

Hi Guys,

After many years of not having an anemone, and proboly about the same time searching for the right one I finally came across a Gigantea that I'm giving a shot. I am a bit out of the loop in how things have changed over the past few years but it seems like there has been a few shifts in the ideology of how to treat new anemones and/or less then perfectly healthy ones. I've skimmed some threads on anti bacterial setups but I don't know if it's something I should do just yet. I'll give you some background and then I guess ask a couple questions, but any advice would be great.

While this is my first gigantea, I've successfully kept bta, lta, maginfica, c. adhaesivum, and haddoni in the past.

With this anemone..


The bad:
It's bleached, and was in a low flow environment.

The good: It's got a tight mouth, It isn't expanding/shrinking, it's sticky, readily accepts food - eats it and doesn't "spew it's guts" afterwords , no visible signs of any rips or tears. It has been living at the store I bought it from for the past 3 months where it supposedly has been getting less bleachy (but to me.. it's still bleached even if I can see some "yellowish/browing" in some of the tenticals )



My 2 questions---

1) Feed or don't feed? I'm reading both. In the past I always fed my sick/bleached anemones with selecon socked food. Now I'm seeing posts about sometimes the food can cause issues and to just give it time?

2) Flow. High, medium, low? I know these nems are partial to higher flow environments. It's the main reason I went this species as it will be sharing it's space in an sps dominant system but I also don't want to just blast it right out of the get go when it's in less then tip top form.




Not the best picture but the lights aren't on yet. It's a lot bigger then it looks in this photo as well.

 

[OrionN]

Other than being bleached, he looks OK. How big is he?
Gigantea like moderatly high flow IMO. The need bright light, at least 250 DE MH (or equivalent) over them. They like to attach to rock lower in the tank.

I would feed him every other day 2-4 pencil eraser size piece of sea food. If he tolerate this you can increase it but I would avoid feeding more than 4 eraser size every other day. They can certainly eat larger food but it take them much longer to digest larger pieces of food. Larger food, then the duration between feeding need to increase.
I would avoid food market for aquarium. I find the freshness of these food is poor in general. Feeding spoiled food will kill your anemone. I would use seafood market for human consumtion. They are a lot fresher and much cheaper too. Good luck with him. He will be a nice blue Gigantea.

 

[MammothReefer]

Thanks Minh,

This tank is setup for SPS so lots of random flow and tons of light, but it has the option to move to avoid both if it chooses. I can get some fresh shrimp and feed it that. However I do feed my tank mysis, pellets, and so on which would be very hard to avoid getting into the nem is that more of a concern these days or are we talking more along the lines of say silversides which is something we used to feed to nems a lot in the past? Size wise I'd say it's about a 1.5' x 1.5' but it's on a pillar type rock so it sort of wraps around.

On a side note is there anything I should be leary of when it comes to carbon dosing? In the past I dosed vodka & zeo and I had no issues keeping magnifica, ltas, and btas in that situation but I haven't tried a gig. I'm using biopellets now, and very small dose of vodka (10ml a day)

 

[D-Nak]

I think you've got it right, and along with Minh's advice, I think it'll be fine. I've seen a lot of bleached gigs recover and thrive, actually more than gigs that looked good, then slumped into the deflate-inflate cycle (prior to Cipro).

I had one incident where I accidentally overdosed my tank with AquaVitro Fuel (aminos) and my gig reacted immediately. It was the only time in a couple of years that it deflated. Fortunately it recovered, but I have since stopped dosing Fuel, just in case. I don't know much about zeo, but my understanding is that part of the protocol involves adding aminos, so I would be careful when doing so and watch the gig for any negative reactions.

 

[MammothReefer]

Thanks again. I'm not using zeo anymore just biopellets/vodka. I was going to start dosing amino but I'll hold off until I know things are stable with the nem. I fed it some fresh shrimp from the market cut a little piece about the size suggested and it ate it right up with no issues so I'm feeling pretty positive right now. The biggest shock is both my clowns jumped right in! I really thought it would take them a lot longer being captive raised and not hosting in years.

 

[SALTWATERSIG]

Hope this helps

My 120 gal set up , I dose Red Sea NO3/NO4 to keep nit/phos in check , also dose "K bal " and a couple more Red Sea additives (can't remember at the moment) thru my bubble magus doser. I have had my Gig since middle of January and to be honest I have never fed it directly, It does fine with whatever I broadcast feed the tank every other day. No issues here .

 

[MammothReefer]

Hi SALTWATERSIG,

Great tank and really nice nem! Did yours start out healthy or bleached?

 

[SALTWATERSIG]

I was lucky enough to get one that was healthy (never deflated) and not bleached . Went to my LFS and advised what I was looking for , he was kind enough to search amongst his wholesale suppliers and I looked at various photos before picking out the nem. prior to getting it I tried to follow the advise from this forum and purchased antibiotics just in case as well as picking up them gig as soon as shipment arrived and not putting into another body of water but my own tank .

 

[MammothReefer]

So just a quick update. I've been feeding it between a 1/4-1/2 a shrimp ever day - other day. It seems to be able to digest it, I actually haven't seen any waste as of it yet which is odd. It has moved a little bit but outside of that not much change. I feel like the tentacles are getting a little longer but it's hard to tell and it really hasn't been very much time. It's mouth does gap a bit from time to time but not in the normal way I've seen unhappy nems gap more that it's trying to buff it's self up so much it simple doesn't line up and it appears to only be effecting the top layer if that makes sense. You can't see all the way in or see it's guts. It's almost like if your mouth were open but your throat was sealed tight. On the positive side the nem isn't bleached as bad as I had originally thought. The foot and the area around the foot (on the backside of the nem) does have some colour to it. Not much but it's there.

 

[OrionN]

It would be great if you can update us with pictures

 

[MammothReefer]

Sure I'll take some tonight when the lights come on. I'm about to do my first water change since getting the nem hopefully it doesn't have any issues.

 

[MammothReefer]

ok horrible cell phone pics. Haven't felt like digging out the camera since reefopocolypse but here are some shots from today.

From the side panel

From the front panel

Close up

 

[MammothReefer]

A quick update. Nem is still doing well. Mouth seems to be tighter lately. I am seeing small patches of brown returning to the tenticals. I was a little worried for a week or so as it was spitting out food, but it turned out I was just trying to feed it pieces that were to large. The only downside is it has been slowly walking. Hopefully it will settle in it seems to have moved around maybe a 4"-6" area over the course of a month.

 

[OrionN]

Looking great (from the last pictures). It is a while since you got him. I think he will do just fine when he is no longer bleached. Then you have the option of not feed if you don't want him to grow.

 

[MammothReefer]

It's just over a month or so. It's interesting watch the zoa come back. It's just these little blotchy patches on small clusters of random tentacles. I'm used to acros where the whole thing will just slowly darken.

 

[MammothReefer]

not sure what went wrong but 3 months down the road the nem took a turn for the worse and fast. Starting cipo treatment tomorrow, but it may be to far gone.

 

[OrionN]

They tend to be very sensitive to pH change. Too quick Kalk drip may really set them back.

 

[D-Nak]

They tend to be very sensitive to pH change. Too quick Kalk drip may really set them back.

I completely agree. Gigs can handle subtle changes in pH that occurs from what happens naturally (gradual lowering of pH for example) but they don't tolerate rapid changes, be it from Kalk or the biggest offender -- pre-made buffers. Never, never use a buffer since they almost always seem to quickly raise pH despite what they claim to do. And though I usually recommend a pH of 8.3, I always tell people never to chase that number, since that usually creates an unstable rise and fall of pH, which is worse than one that gradually became high or low.

Hopefully your gig will recover. I've found that gigs that have lived for a few months in our tanks are actually pretty hardy.

 

[OrionN]

Adding two part quickly can be a big problem also. NaCO3 can cause a very quick jump in pH.
Once an Gigantea living in a reef tank for several months, no new sick anemone added, they can be hardy. It is something that you do that cause the problem. Usually feeding him bad food, additive to the tank that cause problem in pH change. They can tolerate salinity and temperature change well, unless it is really drastic.

 

[MammothReefer]

I'm not dosing kalk, and my 2 part is spread out over 24 dosers (and I'm only dosing around 40ml in 200g of water so it's very little). All those things hold true to SPS as well which are all doing fine. My nutrients are higher then I normally like to keep them but that has been a slow progression and I have plenty of macro, gfo, biopellets, and regular water changes helping with that and my acros are growing ..just slowly. (phos is @ .1-.07 ppm nitrate around 5ish)

I hadn't made any adjustments to my dosing regiments in quite some time or anything else. I'm really not sure why caused the downward spiral. I Didn't add any other nems either.

I was feeding it a couple times a week -fresh shrimp from VONS that I would cut into 3rds. I was buying 1 shrimp at a time (the guys always looked at me funny @ the fish counter) but this way I was getting a fresh shrimp every week. Then one day it just went off into the rocks and I thought ok fine it seems ok there is still light getting in there. I noticed however the foot seemed lighter after a little bit. It must have decided to re-expel it's zoas even though it had been slowly gaining them back. I've got it in a hospital tank w/cipo but it really deteriorated rapidly. It's starting to fall apart in some places.. I'd be surprised if it came back around.

Salinity is maintained with an ATO, I run multiple heaters according to my apex I never swing more then 1 degree. (between 77-78)... I donnu. I don't mess with PH much it's all over the place because of the C02 in my house during the winter. I can't remember the last time I calibrated the probe so it's not something worth noting.