Rbta infected with neon green zooxanthellae?

S

Sfork

New member
My RBTA came from a guy who had many clones and none of them had any green. Mine split several times and one of those times a split took residence next to a neon green toadstool. They're otherwise healthy just becoming green. I should note that the 2 green ones in the pictures below were manually split, however the original started becoming green from the side closest to the toadstool. It slowly spread through the whole BTA.

Here's a picture of one of the unaffected clones:
C3w93l.jpg



Infected RBTA:
oofk8l.jpg



Foot has random streaks of green all up and down the foot:
DwzROl.jpg
 
Kind of looks cool with the combo, but I can understand you being upset about it. Maybe if you changed the lighting so that they have a slightly different wavelength, that way the green would be out competed photosyntheticly for energy and such. Just a thought
 
You don't have "neon green zooxanthellae". Zooxanthellae are brown or golden colored. The "neon green" color is produced by the animal. Not its zooxanthellae. Anemones and coral can change their color to adapt to the conditions in different environments. Your anemone is turning green because of the conditions in your system. It's not because of the green coral next to it. They are both green because that's what works for them in that area of your tank.
 
elegance coral said:
You don't have "neon green zooxanthellae". Zooxanthellae are brown or golden colored. The "neon green" color is produced by the animal. Not its zooxanthellae. Anemones and coral can change their color to adapt to the conditions in different environments. Your anemone is turning green because of the conditions in your system. It's not because of the green coral next to it. They are both green because that's what works for them in that area of your tank.
Click to expand...

Then, what about paly's and zoa and SPS that get "infected" maybe it's not the zoox but it does happen and last I read it was because of the Zoox but I'm sure it could be something else.
 
Corals and anemones are constantly discharging and taking in zooxanthellae. One animal could become "infected" by zooxanthellae from another animal, even if they were on opposite ends of the tank. They don't need to be side by side. They just need to share the same water, and be capable of hosting the same clade of zooxanthellae. For those animals that are capable of producing more than one color, the clade of zooxanthellae they harbor may have an effect on the color the animal produces. I haven't seen conclusive evidence to show this though. When we place a red coral next to a green one, and the red one turns green, that doesn't show there has been a transfer to zooxanthellae at all. It simply shows that the red coral is making adjustments to better suit its environment. Could it have something to do with the clade, or clades, of zooxanthellae it harbors? Maybe. Maybe there's been no transfer of zooxanthellae and the coral is changing color due to a change in lighting. Regardless of all that, it is the coral, or anemone, that produces all the pretty colors we look for. The reds, greens, blues, pinks............ Zooxanthellae produce the brown or tan color we see in these animals.
 
My RBTA has the hints of green in him as well.. The lfs I got him from kept theirs under really crappy lights and now perched himself almost at the top of my tank right urn the LEDS..

When people say it is the lighting, is that a negative comment? I don't mind the color one bit and it is inflated always, big, and really good eater so I assume it is healthy..
 
I have one with the same coloring. I had it under PC's for a couple years. Did great, plain ol' orange coloring. I had it under T5 for a while. Same. It lived and looked fine. I put it under MH. THe disk turned a flourescent green, with a nice flouresc orange to it with MH. I had no idea it had green in it for all those years. Now it's under LED. Same as before, plain orange, green is no longer there. It's in a less intense area under LED's compared to the nice color it got from intense MH. For mine, the intense MH brought out the green it has. It didn't happen over time, it was an immediate color change, from the spectrum or color of the lamp it went to.

Not sure what kind of light you use, but if you like it, and the anemone does well, don't change it.
 
elegance coral said:
Corals and anemones are constantly discharging and taking in zooxanthellae. One animal could become "infected" by zooxanthellae from another animal, even if they were on opposite ends of the tank. They don't need to be side by side. They just need to share the same water, and be capable of hosting the same clade of zooxanthellae. For those animals that are capable of producing more than one color, the clade of zooxanthellae they harbor may have an effect on the color the animal produces. I haven't seen conclusive evidence to show this though. When we place a red coral next to a green one, and the red one turns green, that doesn't show there has been a transfer to zooxanthellae at all. It simply shows that the red coral is making adjustments to better suit its environment. Could it have something to do with the clade, or clades, of zooxanthellae it harbors? Maybe. Maybe there's been no transfer of zooxanthellae and the coral is changing color due to a change in lighting. Regardless of all that, it is the coral, or anemone, that produces all the pretty colors we look for. The reds, greens, blues, pinks............ Zooxanthellae produce the brown or tan color we see in these animals.
Click to expand...

Right on.

I have seen some photos where a green pigmentation "infects" certain cnidarians but it was very uneven. ie: a section of the base and tentacles were affected and the rest still looked normal. The example posted by the OP does not resemble this. I agree with others who posted earlier in that I think it's light intensity in general but more specifically a particular spectrum will affect the coloration more than others. It seems that colors from UV to green seem to affect color more and IR to yellow seem to affect photosynthesis (zooxanthellae growth) more. So, if you can get a bulb with a high spectral peak in the colors most attributable to PAR benefit then find a nice spike in blue, indigo, violet and UV, you will have a winning light rig.
I personally don't focus on that very much any more but if you want more data, Google PAR then look at Sanjay's Reef Lighting Page and compare bulbs with what your desired PAR values are. You can always suppliment with actinic blue to get better coloration.
 
While I'm inclined to agree that this particular situation is likely due to lighting, I have observed corals gaining colors from other species. The most extreme example I've seen was when some brown palys gained fluorescent pink/orange lashes that matched the color of the ricordea next to it. I have always assumed that it was due to zooxanthellae transfer, but that is pure speculation, so it could be due to a completely different process.
 
The RBTA in question has dark greenish patches through it, and even some hints of lemondrop type colors through some of the tentacles... Some of the spots are speckled as well, it's quite an interesting nem..

Either way, it's great and I enjoy it.
 
xtlosx said:
My RBTA has the hints of green in him as well.. The lfs I got him from kept theirs under really crappy lights and now perched himself almost at the top of my tank right urn the LEDS..

When people say it is the lighting, is that a negative comment? I don't mind the color one bit and it is inflated always, big, and really good eater so I assume it is healthy..
Click to expand...

elegance coral said:
I didn't mean it as a negative comment at all. I don't believe Nick did either.
Click to expand...

I didn't mean it as a negative comment either. It's great that you can get more different color to pop out.

I think LED can do funny things(in a good way) with RBTA. Before there was any LED, I've never seen anything like a lemon drop or flame thrower or a rainbow RBTA. But as more and more LED become popular, these RBTA variances occur more often. And for those who have these exotic variance, they run LED!

I saw an orange BTA at the lfs and it has under dim LED. I though about picking it up but didn't want to mess with my nems already in the tank.
Someday, when I feel more comfortable adding BTA in the tank, I will add one to see if the color shift under the LED I'm running.
 
this is me said:
I didn't mean it as a negative comment either. It's great that you can get more different color to pop out.

I think LED can do funny things(in a good way) with RBTA. Before there was any LED, I've never seen anything like a lemon drop or flame thrower or a rainbow RBTA. But as more and more LED become popular, these RBTA variances occur more often. And for those who have these exotic variance, they run LED!

I saw an orange BTA at the lfs and it has under dim LED. I though about picking it up but didn't want to mess with my nems already in the tank.
Someday, when I feel more comfortable adding BTA in the tank, I will add one to see if the color shift under the LED I'm running.
Click to expand...

All the anemones that you mentioned were around long before LED lights became available. I think it is more of a coincidence, because people who don't mind spending big money on the latest and greatest anemone also don't mind spending a lot of money on the latest and greatest lighting system. :)

That is not to say that lighting doesn't affect the color of all cnidarians in our tanks, just that LEDs have not created the morphs that some people think are new. The are not new. They are just being propagated and being given fancy names.
 
My anemone is/was red. Yesterday, for unknown reasons, my true percula clown which has NEVER took the opportunity to be hosted by the anemone, came into close proximity to the anemone for more than a passing moment. For what ever reason, the anemone immediatley turned a dark green near to its base. Now the clown wont leave the anemone....(I made numerous failed efforts to force them to host several months ago) ...the sight of the anemone changing colors in that manner led me to this post. What caused the change?could it have been hormonal?
( my son says it happened because it was happy)
 
based on reading some of these posters' experiences with regular solid red BTAs changing color and getting hints of green, is it suffice to say that the insanely priced "lemondrop" BTAs or "Flame" btas have a chance of losing their colors and turning into regular rbta's as well? in that case, that's a lot of $$ down the drain! :p

and that's what happened to me! years ago, when Reefhotspot was still around, spend a good chunk of cash on two roses whose tentacles were practically all yellow. Did great in my system for over a year, when eventually the colors changed to just a regular "rainbow" bta with green in them. Kept the same brand, phoenix 14K bulbs, changed once every 10 months. The yellow was gone.

I'm going to say that it's not just lighting, but your tank conditions, its inhabitants, etc. as well...

Reminds me of onxy perculas ... you pay so much to get a clown with a lot of black on it, only to have it fade in your tank when, say, a RBTA hosts it and it looks like a regular perc! haha.

in any case, very interesting thread.
 
Are you sure its an RBTA??? I have an anemone that was primarily red but in time it got green and come to find it its a Rainbow BTA. Look it up. Yours looks just like one
 
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