RBTA health/coloration

[spieszak]

Good Morning

So, there's a long drawn out story as to why my RBTA encountered problems, suffice it to say a cleaner shrimp decided to try to nit pick him to death, and moving him to his own 30 cube had him dealing with some new tank syndrome for a while. (did my best with LR from an existing tank, and his salinity and params have stayed pretty stable.. but we still did diatoms, and cyano as the new tank established) Params are right now and holding steady, and he never saw a real spike in anything, but just minor fluctuations as the tank caught up to him.
He has is definitely worked himself back from the edge of death now over the last month and a half, has "seemingly" grown some although its hard to tell because he wasn't really fully inflating before. He's being fed every other day at this point to help him recover, and I'm assuming this isn't a problem because I'm feeding smallish shrimp/silverside pieces and some mysis if he will take it on the opposite days, and he isn't regurgitating it back out.
I'm running 2 36W pc lamps which "feel" like enough light to me. The 30 cube is an odd shape, and I can't hang a light over it because of where it sits, so that was the best lighting I could find to fit. He chosen a spot high in the rock, and seems to be getting enough light, although I'm considering adding at least one more 36w fixture, or a t5 if I can find one.
He's slowing getting healthier, I can see that in his behavior. He is now readily accepting food where as before he was basically starving, inflating regularly where he wasn't before..coloring up some where as before he looked like a starving nem. He's also spending a lot more time inflated now instead of hiding, and he has stopped wandering, although the wandering was probably due to the NTS. His behavior has improved basically since 2 weeks in, but over the last month and a half its been much more noticeable. This whole thing started in November (thread here http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1931221 for those of you that checked it, I lost two of the clones as they were the most "unhealthy" parts of the split)

All that just to get to my questions. It too is quite a list.
What are the chances he will recover his original coloration? He's "tinging" back to his original red now, but I'm wondering if once the coloration is lost, if it CAN be regained.
If he can regain his coloration, is there anything I can do to help him with that? Is there anything specific I should be looking for/dosing for in my params that would help/hurt coloration, or does coloration come from his symbiotic algae?
If the lack of coloration continues, (don't know if he can get it back as stated above) does that point to anything specific such as insufficient lighting?
To tell you the truth, I don't care if he ever really regains his color since he has now become one of my favorite animals... but I want to make sure I'm doing the best for him while he continues to recover and whats really important to me here is having an understanding of how his color now reflects on his overall health.

Thanks for reading this far!
-Stacey

 

[Anemone]

IME, coloration can be both health and lighting related. Since you appear to have taken care of the health angle, your RBTA can color back up. Not seeing a picture of your anemone, I'm assuming you're talking primarily about darkening, since RBTAs tend to bleach to a white or even bright pink when stressed.

The red color in a RBTA is not caused by the symbiotic dinoflagelletes we generally refer to as zooxanthellae. Zoox are generally brown to green in color. The red/pink/orange shades of our RBTAs are produced by fluorescing proteins that are believed to act as a sun block (or, more correctly as a sun screen) to filter out and/or amplify certain light wavelengths. A very good discussion of zooxanthellae and coral coloration can be found here: http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=234253&highlight=zooxanthellae

So, if your RBTA is staying bleached, it probably doesn't need the extra light protection the darker pigments provide. I've seen discussions of bleached RBTAs in high-light environments over longer periods of time. My opinion on these is that either the anemones were slowly starving and were therefore trying to allow maximum light penetration for whatever zooxanthellae remained, or perhaps more likely, the anemones were so bleached that they no longer possessed ANY zooxanthellae, and hence didn't need to regulate zooxanthellae growth or oxygen production within their tissue. These occurences don't seem to be that common, which leads me to believe that most anemones, even highly stressed ones, retain some small portion of their zoox when they bleach, which allows them to "farm" the zoox back to sufficient levels to require pigment protection/regulation.

So, in your specific case, since you are feeding (and actually probably overfeeding) your RBTA, I'd say that your 72 watts of lighting is a little on the "light" side and may not require the RBTA to produce pigmentation to protect itself.

Kevin

 

[spieszak]

So, upping the lighting might help. As I said, I'm looking more for healthy now rather than appearance in general, so if I do add the extra watts, should I do so sooner than later, or at this stage would it really matter? I know I'll need to acclimate him to the extra lighting (i don't know why he's a him.. by it seems unnatural to keep typing "my nem")
Also, I realize I am overfeeding at this point, and intend to slow down... As a matter of fact I'll probably start extending the time between feedings now slowly so over the next couple of weeks. His tips are still a _little_ dark, which is what I've always seen in the "this is a starving anemone" pictures and at one point he was basically ALL dark except for the area around his mouth. He also hid so much that I was only able to feed opportunistically, and since he had lost most of his "sticky" even that was tenuous, which I've assumed is another reason as to why it's taken him a while to get healthy/healthier. He's much more transparent now with a pink/orange hue.
The picture is pretty washed out by the lighting but you can see him here.
http://208.106.151.16/nem.jpg

 

[bradleym]

IME, coloration can be both health and lighting related. Since you appear to have taken care of the health angle, your RBTA can color back up. Not seeing a picture of your anemone, I'm assuming you're talking primarily about darkening, since RBTAs tend to bleach to a white or even bright pink when stressed.

The red color in a RBTA is not caused by the symbiotic dinoflagelletes we generally refer to as zooxanthellae. Zoox are generally brown to green in color. The red/pink/orange shades of our RBTAs are produced by fluorescing proteins that are believed to act as a sun block (or, more correctly as a sun screen) to filter out and/or amplify certain light wavelengths. A very good discussion of zooxanthellae and coral coloration can be found here: http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=234253&highlight=zooxanthellae

So, if your RBTA is staying bleached, it probably doesn't need the extra light protection the darker pigments provide. I've seen discussions of bleached RBTAs in high-light environments over longer periods of time. My opinion on these is that either the anemones were slowly starving and were therefore trying to allow maximum light penetration for whatever zooxanthellae remained, or perhaps more likely, the anemones were so bleached that they no longer possessed ANY zooxanthellae, and hence didn't need to regulate zooxanthellae growth or oxygen production within their tissue. These occurences don't seem to be that common, which leads me to believe that most anemones, even highly stressed ones, retain some small portion of their zoox when they bleach, which allows them to "farm" the zoox back to sufficient levels to require pigment protection/regulation.

So, in your specific case, since you are feeding (and actually probably overfeeding) your RBTA, I'd say that your 72 watts of lighting is a little on the "light" side and may not require the RBTA to produce pigmentation to protect itself.

Kevin

Great explanation! Top to bottom. I might even hafta quote you someday.

 

[spieszak]

You know I got so caught up in question and answer, especially with someone who explains things so well, that I totally forgot to thank you for the great explanation! Thanks to bradleym too, for reminding me

 

[Anemone]

Thanks for the kind words!

In looking at the picture of your nem, to me it looks "dull." I'm not sure if it's the exposure, but I see a lot of brown, but not much red. If that is the case, two things may be at play. One, your lighting may indeed be too low for your anemone to need colored pigments for light protection, or, as much as I hate to suggest it, your anemone looks like a brown BTA. In fact, it looks very much like BTAs that have been dyed red by unscrupulous vendors. Most of them don't survive very long in captivity, but those that do eventually lose their red color and return to a more healthy brown. I haven't read up on your other posts to know how long you have had the nem, so I don't know if this is a possibility, but I'm just telling you my impression of the picture (which may be way off, due to the picture quality). If it was a dye job, your nem looks like it came through it okay, and will darken up with more lighting (unfortunately brown, not red). Either way, if it was my nem, I'd reduce feedings to a couple of times a week and look into increasing the lighting.

Kevin

 

[spieszak]

When he was healthy. I ordered extra lighting. Can't hurt to have it..I'll just have to acclimate him to it, so I suppose I will find out.
(He's not really as brown as the pic, but I had to adjust contrast just to some color to show, since it was so washed out)
I'm slowing feeding now..

 

[spieszak]

as brown as the first pic I meant to say.. the new one shows his color fairly well..

 

[Anemone]

Ah, that's much better coloration!

Kevin

 

[spieszak]

Yes, it is. When he finally comes out of this, he is going to have an insane story to tell his clowns!

 

[spieszak]

Just a follow up... he's been acclimated to the new lighting, and I don't think its a coincidence that I'm already seeing better color.
Thanks for the great advice!