I am curious if anyone who's treated giganteas, successfully or unsuccessfully, with antibiotics has had any issues with ammonia prevention. The reason I mention this is that my first gigantea reacted very negatively to Seachem's AmGuard. I added some based on the ambiguity of the lowest level of ammonia test kits. I figured it couldn't hurt. The tentacles immediately shortened. The disc inflated as though it was taking water in. I thought the water must have had some ammonia issues and I was doing the right thing. I kept up this protocol (a little dose of AmGuard post a partial WC from DT) and the anemone always reacted this way, never really improved and died quite a while later -- sadly it was crazy resilient. At the time, I figured the antibiotic wasn't working.
My second gigantea was a little healthier but still deflated shortly after purchasing and I started the same treatment and protocol. When I saw a similar reaction, I decided to try the AmGuard *before* doing the water change. It reacted negatively so I did a water change and it improved rapidly back to the pre-Amguard state. My final experiment was to switch to Ammonia remover pads avoiding Amguard. The anemone never reacted negatively and with continued antibiotic treatment shortly returned to a healthy state. It has since been added to the DT and continues to do well.
I am posting this in hopes it helps someone else not make the same mistake I did in not recognizing what was going on. I am also interested in how other people deal with potential ammonia issues such as sloughing off tissue, decay, etc. Just siphoning and partial water changes? I like the added security of the ammonia remover pads even though they may not be necessary.
My second gigantea was a little healthier but still deflated shortly after purchasing and I started the same treatment and protocol. When I saw a similar reaction, I decided to try the AmGuard *before* doing the water change. It reacted negatively so I did a water change and it improved rapidly back to the pre-Amguard state. My final experiment was to switch to Ammonia remover pads avoiding Amguard. The anemone never reacted negatively and with continued antibiotic treatment shortly returned to a healthy state. It has since been added to the DT and continues to do well.
I am posting this in hopes it helps someone else not make the same mistake I did in not recognizing what was going on. I am also interested in how other people deal with potential ammonia issues such as sloughing off tissue, decay, etc. Just siphoning and partial water changes? I like the added security of the ammonia remover pads even though they may not be necessary.
