Heteractis malu--doing it all wrong

Maybe, just Maybe

Maybe, just Maybe

Well, Not surprisingly, the situation with my H. malu seems to have been a combination of factors.

Major water changes and adding some carbon to the filter seemed to help a fair amount, but the anemone still was not "digging in", but was simply staying in the same place holding onto a half mussle shell.

Yesterday morning I was examining it closely trying to see what it "might want or need" and I saw that a few grains of sand had started to collect on the top of the anemone. That made me think it might be a little too much current at the bottom of the tank and maybe the anemone wasn't settling in because there was a bit too much movement of the DSB surface. With no better theory, I adjusted both the powerheads so that they moved water more in the mid and top regions of the tank and less along the surface of the DSB.

Last night when I got home the anemone was in the same place, but the foot was no longer visible. Oddly, my metal halide fixture had "picked" that point in time to drop one side of the double sided bulb out of the socket, so the tank was pretty dark and the anemone was not much more inflated than it had been in the morning. I fixed the situation with the light (lucky the bulb didn't break) and was blowing the last few grains of sand off the anemone with my turkey baster. I reached down and gently "poked" the anemone with the tip of the baster and it didn't move aside at all. I think that might mean the foot has finally dug into the sand!

I examined it again this morning just after the light came on and things were basically the same--same location, foot not visible, about the same amount of (non)inflation.

I don't want to harrass the animal, but I am pretty excited if it has decided to dig in. I hope that a full day of light may make for a happy and healthy looking anemone when I get home.

I will let you all know.
 
Try to give it some time without anymore major water changes, light and current changes. It sounds like it's very stressed and you don't want to add to that any further.
 
Well, tonight when I got home the foot was clearly visable, so I don't think it ever dug in. I doubt it would have dug in and then pulled the foot back out. It is still in the same location, just arranged a bit differently so that I can see under it and see the foot resting on the sand.
 
Well, I am sorry to say that I never did figure out what was wrong (either with the anemone or with my set up). Starting two days ago the anemone was about the size of a silver dollar (equally flat, too), and had moved a few inches away from the light and under some macro algae.

I decided that was such a "bad sign" that I had nothing left to loose, so I went through a full acclimation process and moved it to my display tank. In the process I noticed it was developing a few very small spots that looked like "rot" to me. I rubbed them gently off and placed it on the DSB of my display. A few hours later I noticed some of the bristle worms in the tank "working on" the spots of decay.

The anemone is still in the display, almost exactly where I put it, but it shows no signs of life. I would be very surprised if it does anything besides disappear in the near future.

Thanks for the suggestions. I am still very uncertain what the root of the problem was.
 
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