Nem Success Story

[jonwright]

It's been a year and my little nem has been doing fine. I was lucky, I suppose, that I never had any evidence of an infection which seems so rampant on the forum here. I got him from Live Aquaria, and although I ordered a Malu I got a Crispa (they handled it very well and vastly exceeded my expectations).

Took a little bit to get him all settled in (and lots of hand-wringing on my part) but he's done very well. My little 50 gal that I originally had him in suffered dinos and I closed it down. He's seen outbreaks of various water problems, dinos, bacterial stuff, flukes and perhaps some velvet in the tank. YES...I've learned my lesson for SURE now with QT EVERYTHING - not just fish.

He's now the centerpiece of my 155 that's been up since Nov '15 and enjoying life with Stinky, my skunk clown. I feel him shrimp almost exclusively and sometimes a wad of squid.

If you ever think fish don't get depressed - separate a little anemone fish from her nem. When I removed the nem from the 50 to treat the entire tank she was listless and just hid under a rock. Then we she came out she was very, very aggressive to her tank mates which she never did when she had her nem.

Hand Wringing:
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2496521&page=2

<a href="http://s1317.photobucket.com/user/jonwright3803/media/1CD64024-F7BE-4961-B23F-3E24C205399A_zpsqtfxynpg.jpg.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://i1317.photobucket.com/albums/t638/jonwright3803/1CD64024-F7BE-4961-B23F-3E24C205399A_zpsqtfxynpg.jpg" border="0" alt=" photo 1CD64024-F7BE-4961-B23F-3E24C205399A_zpsqtfxynpg.jpg"/></a>

 

[jonwright]

<a href="http://s1317.photobucket.com/user/jonwright3803/media/F5A723EA-2DA9-4650-9261-49502AE3B7B5_zpsoha82asf.jpg.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://i1317.photobucket.com/albums/t638/jonwright3803/F5A723EA-2DA9-4650-9261-49502AE3B7B5_zpsoha82asf.jpg" border="0" alt=" photo F5A723EA-2DA9-4650-9261-49502AE3B7B5_zpsoha82asf.jpg"/></a>

 

[garygb]

Beautiful crispa!

 

[rt67ghy]

Beautiful specimen.

 

[jonwright]

Omg. I guess I tempted fate. I've never seen him do this. Ever. Only thing I did today was change a bit of water 5 gal out of 200). He's all balled up right when I started to feed the tank.

WTH???!!

<a href="http://s1317.photobucket.com/user/jonwright3803/media/51DD49E1-A1E1-48BA-BF75-EDCEAAFEFEE2_zpslz7di6e8.jpg.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://i1317.photobucket.com/albums/t638/jonwright3803/51DD49E1-A1E1-48BA-BF75-EDCEAAFEFEE2_zpslz7di6e8.jpg" border="0" alt=" photo 51DD49E1-A1E1-48BA-BF75-EDCEAAFEFEE2_zpslz7di6e8.jpg"/></a>

 

[fcmatt]

I would just relax, maybe test water, and do not make any changes just yet. I bet it will be looking good again in 24 to 36 hours

 

[jonwright]

He's inflated a bit more, but still not where he was for sure. He's not balled up but certainly at least 1/2 of his normal size.

I ran a full battery of tests on Saturday, the day before he was all shriveled up. ONLY other thing was I fed him a really large piece of shrimp Saturday as well. Dunno.

I'm not changing anything drastically or anything yet - I have no idea what to "fix"!

I had tapered off the Alk/CA since it was like, 10 on Saturday. It dropped .9 points when I tested again on Sunday but that's within general guidelines for alk changes. I'm sure he's weathered bigger changes than that before. Nonetheless I've stepped up my alk/Ca supplement a bit to keep the drop slower (that was a bit faster than I wanted).

I have also cut out carbon dosing. I had slowly lowered it over the course of over a month (from like 12 mL/day). For a few weeks I was at 2 mL/day and I stopped that Saturday as well. I mean, good lord. The way I mix that it's actually .5 mL of Vin and .5 mL of vodka. I wouldn't think stoping it from 2 mL would be "drastic". Yesterday I turned it back on to 1 mL/day. ????

And I did all these adjustment prior to seeing him all shriveled up, mind you.

*Hand wringing* Eh. I'll keep steady-ing on. Maybe some of the "minor" adjustments I've done aren't minor????

 

[dreaddinit]

How is it looking now? Mine will do things like that when the lights go out or when the shrimp is trying to steal its food etc.

Sent from my SM-N920P using Tapatalk

 

[jonwright]

Actually he came back after a couple days, slowly. No idea...not sure if he was expelling water because I fed him a really big piece of shrimp, if the newest batch of shrimp has bleach on it (or some other preservative), or the old shrimp is too old, or if the I let the dKh drop too fast, or if the carbon dosing is needed for his zoox.

I also saw him shrivel up a week ago - at that point in time I had cleaned the power heads and soaked them in bleach (RISKY, I know...was experimenting with eradicating algae on them). But I also forgot to plug one in...so yeah he was unhappy. I turned on the other PH, put some some dechlorinator in water, put GAC online, and changed about 10% of the water (and now I have AWC going every day).

Soooo....this is the second deflate event after that.

I need to get back to "No hands in/on the tank"

Here's the timeline:

7-9: Tempted fate with pic of nem and post here. dKh @10. Little high, reduced 2 part from 30mL/day to 12. Also dosed 25mL (1/2 dosage as indicated) Iron supplement (just found this in my notes). Ceased 2 mL day of VV dosing.
7-10: dKh 9.1, nem shriveled up into little ball (pic above). Increased 2 part dosage from 12mL to 15mL.
7-11: dKh 8.7, nem not in little ball but still less than 1/2 of where he usually is, increased 2 part to 24 mL. Resumed 2mL VV carbon.
7-12: nem looks much improved. Certainly not quite where he was, but almost back.
7-13: Almost back. dKh 8.7