How to bleach your anemone...

[BonsaiNut]

I was reading up on anemone nutrition in a technical book, and came across a section that I had read before, but never really thought about sharing It involves all the ways scientists know to get anemones to expel their zooxanthellae. They include:

Prolonged starvation
Continuous darkness
Extremely bright light
High temperature
Abruptly altered salinity

To avoid having your anemone bleach, avoid doing any of the above

I think people know some (or all) of the above, but I have never seen it in a list before...

 

[tallreefguy]

Hmm... what defines 'Extremely' bright light? I thought that's what we were going for.

 

[bradleym]

Maybe that should be changed to abrupt exposure to extremely bright light?? Although some anemones can only take so much I guess, though it's hard to imagine that being a problem in a reef tank...

 

[bradleym]

I was reading up on anemone nutrition in a technical book, and came across a section that I had read before, but never really thought about sharing It involves all the ways scientists know to get anemones to expel their zooxanthellae. They include:

Prolonged starvation
Continuous darkness
Extremely bright light
High temperature
Abruptly altered salinity

To avoid having your anemone bleach, avoid doing any of the above

I think people know some (or all) of the above, but I have never seen it in a list before...

Guilty as charged, about a month ago.

It really works FYI. Wish me luck fixing THAT one.

 

[elegance coral]

They need to add low temperatures, and low/slow gas exchange.

I find it very interesting that the first one on the list is "prolonged starvation". Many hobbyists don't believe anemones need nutrition, other than what the zooxanthellae provide. Obviously, this is wrong.

 

[bradleym]

I find it very interesting that the first one on the list is "prolonged starvation". Many hobbyists don't believe anemones need nutrition, other than what the zooxanthellae provide.

What is this 1970? BAHAHA couldn't resist!

 

[BonsaiNut]

I find it very interesting that the first one on the list is "prolonged starvation". Many hobbyists don't believe anemones need nutrition, other than what the zooxanthellae provide. Obviously, this is wrong.

This gets into the last conversation we had on anemone nutrition. "It depends"

It depends on species, environment, and most importantly, on the presence of dissolved organic matter in the water. In most reef tanks, it is likely that with-holding direct supplemental feeding will not be enough to force an anemone into a "starvation" state - simply because there is too much floating food, detritus, and dissolved organic matter in the water. (It doesn't need to "eat" if it can absorb nutrients through its cell walls).

If you took a perfectly healthy anemone and placed it into fresh laboratory quality seawater without dissolved nutrients, it would start to "starve" - probably due to the absence of bio-available nitrogen and phosphorous. In this state, zooxanthellae would try to absorb these elements from the host anemone - actually becoming parasitic in terms of becoming a net energy user inside the anemone instead of a net energy provider. When conditions like this are met, the anemone expels the zooxanthellae.

So depending on conditions in your reef tank, you may or may not have to supplementally feed your anemone. But just because you aren't feeding it directly does not mean that it is not taking in nutrients separate from the energy provided by its symbiotic algae.

 

[BonsaiNut]

Maybe that should be changed to abrupt exposure to extremely bright light?? Although some anemones can only take so much I guess, though it's hard to imagine that being a problem in a reef tank...

Probably... though the article I read didn't directly say. I assume that it meant a change to extremely bright light - like extreme low tide, bringing a deep water anemone into shallower water, etc.