Mouth gaping H. Crispa in low flow

Randy Holmes-Farley

Reef Chemist
Premium Member
I have a purple H. crispa that I've had for more than 3 years, and it is doing very well.

Today I was swapping in some new stream pumps for the Tunze powerheads that I had, and much of the circulation was off for about 20 minutes during bright lighting.

Interestingly, the crispa opened its mouth pretty wide, apparently not getting enough water flow. It is often hard to see the mouth, but it certainly closed up not long after the flow came back on. I've never ever seen it do that before.

Do others notice this effect when water flow drops a lot for some reason? I guess it makes sense, I just did not expect it.
 
I have not noticed that particular behavior in mine (just crossed the 6 year mark in Sept), but various "weird shapes": stretching its trunk very long for no apparent reason, shriveled tentacles, and 2 spawns (it's a male). The first spawn was stress-related after a broken heater electrocuted all the fish, the third was not witnessed per se, but the tank was very cloudy the next morning similar to the last time, so I assume it was the anemone.

I have also noticed that they are particularly sensitive to the alk component of the 2-part formula, I assume it is the ph. A couple of times when I added it too quickly the anemone instantaneously snapped back into it's cave and remained there most of the day, much to the dismay of its clowns.

Got pics of yours? Here's mine:
20209clown_guarding_anemone_RC.jpg
 
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