JohnV8r
New member
I have a couple of questions about my RBTA.
The background on my RBTA is this: I bought it from an LFS. It had nice green tenticles with bright rose colored tips. I got it just after it had arrived at the LFS and it was clear after I brought it home it had a rough time in transit to the LFS. It spent the first four weeks in my reef tank deep in a cave completely shaded from anything and at an angle that made it impossible for me to feed it. Eventually, it settled in a position at the bottom of my rock stack where it could get some light and where I could feed it. However, it spent a lot of time ranging from partially inflated to completely deflated. Here is a picture where you can still see the green color somewhat, although at this point there was a lot of translucence:
Shortly after the photo above, all the color disappeared and I thought the neme was going to die. However, I fed it a couple of brine shrimp or mysis shrimp daily so it was getting some nutrition given the absence of any zooanthellae.
I now have the rose color on the tips back and, generally speaking, things appear to be headed the right direction. The neme is smaller than when I got it and still spends some time only partially inflated. I attribute that more to my maroon clowns than any water quality issues (although I have wondered at times if vodka dosing is not helping) Phosphates are immeasurable (I have a Hanna checker arriving this week so I can get a more accurate reading), nitrates range from immeasurable to 1 ppm. dKH generally ranges from 8.0-9.5. Mg ranges from 1250 to 1500, Ca from 425-450. My acros and lps corals are all doing fine and exhibiting excellent growth and coloration.
My questions really are these:
1. How long should I expect it to take for full color to return (assuming somewhere there is a little bit of the original zooanthellae)?
2. Is vodka dosing potentially an issue here?
3. Any other water parameter I should be looking at? I'm not a ZERO nutrient SPS guy. I feed my tank (including my corals) well each week and let carbon dosing, and GFO help me remove excess nitrates and phosphate.
Thanks in advance.
The background on my RBTA is this: I bought it from an LFS. It had nice green tenticles with bright rose colored tips. I got it just after it had arrived at the LFS and it was clear after I brought it home it had a rough time in transit to the LFS. It spent the first four weeks in my reef tank deep in a cave completely shaded from anything and at an angle that made it impossible for me to feed it. Eventually, it settled in a position at the bottom of my rock stack where it could get some light and where I could feed it. However, it spent a lot of time ranging from partially inflated to completely deflated. Here is a picture where you can still see the green color somewhat, although at this point there was a lot of translucence:
Shortly after the photo above, all the color disappeared and I thought the neme was going to die. However, I fed it a couple of brine shrimp or mysis shrimp daily so it was getting some nutrition given the absence of any zooanthellae.
I now have the rose color on the tips back and, generally speaking, things appear to be headed the right direction. The neme is smaller than when I got it and still spends some time only partially inflated. I attribute that more to my maroon clowns than any water quality issues (although I have wondered at times if vodka dosing is not helping) Phosphates are immeasurable (I have a Hanna checker arriving this week so I can get a more accurate reading), nitrates range from immeasurable to 1 ppm. dKH generally ranges from 8.0-9.5. Mg ranges from 1250 to 1500, Ca from 425-450. My acros and lps corals are all doing fine and exhibiting excellent growth and coloration.
My questions really are these:
1. How long should I expect it to take for full color to return (assuming somewhere there is a little bit of the original zooanthellae)?
2. Is vodka dosing potentially an issue here?
3. Any other water parameter I should be looking at? I'm not a ZERO nutrient SPS guy. I feed my tank (including my corals) well each week and let carbon dosing, and GFO help me remove excess nitrates and phosphate.
Thanks in advance.
Last edited:
