RBTA not doing well

clownhunter

New member
Tank is about 4 years old. The anemone(s) is about 2 1/2 years old. When I purchased the anemone it was smaller than a baseball. Quickly grew to the size of a football and about a year ago from now it did indeed split. It actually split into 3. All 3 nems have healed and have been doing wonderfully for the past year, along with all my other corals. Just recently one of the nems is not doing well. It started out as a few tentacles deflated and then day by date more and more tentacles started to deflate. The tentacles look like they have exploded or ripped apart. Foot is strong and mouth does not gap open. He currently is still in the tank and has been deflated for 6 to 7 days now. He eats but then spits it out so I have stopped feeding and just letting him be for the moment. He is separated from the rest of the tank and is still declining. As I stated before all other corals and fish are well so I am stumped.

Temp is 80
Salinity 1.025
Nitrates 10-20
Ammonia 0
Nitrites 0
Ph 8
Mag 1200
Cal 400
Alk 11

Fish
Two clowns
Coral beauty
4 chromis

4ft 72 bow tank 20gal sump
Arctic t247 lights

Any help is much appreciated just hate to see the poor guy melt away.
Have included pictures of all 3 nems
 

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Feeding rbta's is completely unnecessary and generally does more harm than good.

Avoid feeding and just monitor it. They do wonky things sometimes. I've had mine shrivel into almost nothing and disappear for over a week or 2 then voila he's chilling ontop of a rock one morning. Years later and they're still doing random stuff lol

I haven't fed mine in over 8 years? I went from 1 to 4
 
Feeding rbta's is completely unnecessary and generally does more harm than good.

Avoid feeding and just monitor it. They do wonky things sometimes. I've had mine shrivel into almost nothing and disappear for over a week or 2 then voila he's chilling ontop of a rock one morning. Years later and they're still doing random stuff lol

I haven't fed mine in over 8 years? I went from 1 to 4

yup i second this and wouldnt feed them.

i have had mine for a year, havent fed it once and now i have 5 from it splitting so much
 
Phosphate level?

Don't give up hope - I've had mine get worse than that with just the oral disc and barely visible nubs where the tentacles were and it came back. I think it was just down to nutrient levels being out of balance but I'm still not entirely sure.
 
Thanks for the hope griff. He's still alive for sure. 1/2 of him is starting to puff up and the other 1/2 is still badly deflated. Just so curious what happened. As the other nems from same split are completely fine.
 
BTAs are real fighters. Take care for good and stable water parameters and you have a good chance that they begin feeling better.

My advice as also for some other quite similar posts. Don't just believe what your water test kits trying to tell you. Check the accuracy of your kits and your ability to read them correctly with so called "Multi reference solutions". Lots of people under/over-estimate their water quality by wrong believes in test results.
Remeber also your LFS might measure wrong ;)

From my experience anemones need stable parameters, especially PO4 should be in the low range low!

rgds M
 
Re-tested twice today
Mag 1400-1420
Alk 7.7-8.0
Good advice to test and retest. Thank you for that.

Update on the RBTA
He for sure is still alive. His tentacles are actually starting to inflate and he is looking a lot better. I haven't fed in awhile it been over a week now. He's been pooping everyday which is a bit of concern because it seems way more than usual. None the less he is looking better.
 
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