Haddoni help please

[CoralConnoisseu]

First off, I frequent this section of RC and love every moment I spend lurking around all of your beautiful anemones.

Now for the goods. I have had a red haddoni carpet in my tank for about 2 years. Had horrible luck getting perks or occys into it. About 8 months ago we pulled the perks to add a couple clarkiis. The anemone immediately hosted the clarkiis and all was well.
The anemone is around 18 inch when fully open, mixed reef, all is well with corals, fish and other inverts.

For the last week or so the anemone has had a ballooned mouth. We have seen this occasionally in the past, but never for more than an hour or 2.

Being a haddoni it's foot is slid at least 10 inches under the rock parallel with the substrate, where it than curls straight down and is stuck to the bottom glass. We have a borderline deep sand bed with anywhere between 2.5 and 3.5 inches of substrate. So removing this anemone would require moving 3-4 large pieces of liverock which are encrusted with coral, and than stirring up substrate to get at the anemones foot. I do run a separate frag system with over 100 gallons of water volume, so would have space to remove all corals. Although I have never taken on such a project, and with only 3 years in the hobby I would be scared to do so.

Tank specs, classic 90 gallon reef ready tank, roughly 30 gallons of water in the sump.
6 bulb t5 with a 50/50 reefbrite stick. The t5 bulbs are almost a year old and I do have all 6 replacements waiting to be swapped out.

Is my anemone upset because the lights are not strong enough anymore? Maybe I should be feeding it more?

Any help or comments would be appreciated. My lights are still off for a few more hours, so i won't be able to get decent pictures until than.

Thanks for any help I can get!

 

[Tango451]

This actually happened to an established red haddoni I have. I ended up needing to treat him and removing him was a pain. The balloon mouth not going away was the first sign and this lasted for weeks. After he started looking on the smaller side I pulled him out and treated him.

Do you have any pictures? How big is ballon of the balloon mouth? On the small side or larger side?

 

[CoralConnoisseu]

It is not constantly ballooned, but rapidly grows and shrinks. When I posted last it had been ballooned all morning, within 20 min it was back to normal. Now, a few hours later, it is probably ballooned 3-4 inches across, and maybe 1.5-2 inches up off his mouth. This is all during lights out period. I work afternoon shift so my lights are on 5 pm until about 3 am.

Lights come on in 1 hour and I will put up some pics.

I am just kinda worried cause I know an anemone of this size will probably nuke the tank if it dies, but stirring up that much gravel to remove it could be just as bad.

 

[Tango451]

If you have bad him for two years he will not just die, plus haddonis are pretty strong and can be sick for awhile before dying. You'll usually have ample warning if it is going to die.

Is treating an option for you?

Will wait to see the pics to say my opinion for sure, but it sounds just like mine so far

 

[CoralConnoisseu]

Sorry if the pics are not perfect. That's with just 2 super blue t5 bulbs. Excuse the zoas who are not open, light literally came on 10 min ago

 

[Daniel62]

Hi. Mine do this as well, but like yours only at night. Mine seem to go in cycles nothing for a few weeks, then a couple of nights in a row they will do this. If this is the only nem in the tank for 2 years, I would find it hard to believe it is infected, Unless you fed it some spoiled food like silversides. Do you have some daytime pictures? Also if you want them to move hit them with some pretty high flow, this will usually get them to move, but you need to be around while you do this as you do not want them to get sucked into your powerheads. He is not inflating and deflating, right. Have you watched this happen, perhaps your clowns are irritating it at night. Mine host false percs, so I have not had this problem. Also do you feed the tank at night, i feel that this might be a feeding responce. In the wild something like 90% of there food it microscopic. Is it spitting out small black pellets. Also I find if my phos. get to high they will start to do this as well.

 

[CoralConnoisseu]

Hi. Mine do this as well, but like yours only at night. Mine seem to go in cycles nothing for a few weeks, then a couple of nights in a row they will do this. If this is the only nem in the tank for 2 years, I would find it hard to believe it is infected, Unless you fed it some spoiled food like silversides. Do you have some daytime pictures? Also if you want them to move hit them with some pretty high flow, this will usually get them to move, but you need to be around while you do this as you do not want them to get sucked into your powerheads. He is not inflating and deflating, right. Have you watched this happen, perhaps your clowns are irritating it at night. Mine host false percs, so I have not had this problem. Also do you feed the tank at night, i feel that this might be a feeding responce. In the wild something like 90% of there food it microscopic. Is it spitting out small black pellets. Also I find if my phos. get to high they will start to do this as well.

I have watched it happen a couple times. The clowns are constantly in and out of the anemone, never seem to bite it, and don't seem to be being to rough with it. The anemone is pretty big compared to the clowns.

He did get fed some small frozen shrimp from big als twice in the last few weeks. Rinced and thawed of course, no ice cubes for this anemone.

About the phosphates tho... we took the gfo reactor offline a couple weeks ago and haven't remembered/when we remembered didn't have the time to clean it. Doing this right now.
Top right corner of my pictures there is a tiny bit of cyano under the dragon soul favia. Just water changed about 20 gallons and we used a syphon to remove the cyano.

The reactor will be back online tonight and I am hoping that is the problem.

Thanks for the input everyone, more opinions are more than welcome.

 

[OrionN]

I think this condition is due to sub optimal water condition. How are you in keeping up with water change and keep the water clean?
If I get behind in water change, my SPS is still growing like gang buster and all my LPS and clams doing great, but my Gigantea start to have balloon mouth. I get on the ball and do more water change and the mouth go back to normal. Also when my Gigantea doing this, one of my Haddoni would start to move around a bit. I think my anemones are very sensitive to minor problems in trace elements. The seem to be affected before anything else.
Also, for about 8 months or so, I used Pro-Aquatics salt mix and really have a lot of problems. I ditched the Pro Aquatics salt and go back to IO, this problem resolved. I can miss a few water change without problem. Right now, I try to do 50 gal water change every week (system of 450 gal) and everything are thriving again.

 

[CoralConnoisseu]

Thanks again guys, nem still extends when lights have been on for a few hours.
Much larger now, but still has an oversized mouth.

Couple more pics for reference.

I do kinda wish he would move, sitting on my couch I get a nice view of carpet butt... not the pretty red like some of you guys get.

Not going to attempt moving him anytime soon tho.

 

[Daniel62]

Seeing the last picture he does seem overly inflated. Hope your water fixes help

 

[CoralConnoisseu]

Seeing the last picture he does seem overly inflated. Hope your water fixes help

He is always that big.