Red Carpet

D

dwdowney

New member
I have a had a large red carpet for a couple of months now. About a week ago, he decided to move into the shade and his mouth is gaping (about 2 inchs in one direction and non in the other). This was actually before a massive salinity disaster that I had (ie left the 300 gpd RODI on for a day and dropped the salinity from a 1.024 to 1.015. My parameters are back stable
Specific Gravity: 1.024
Phos: 0 (undetectable)
No3 and NO2 : 0
Ca: 400 ppm
Alk: 10.2 DKH
PH: 8.2 (very stable)
Is there anything that I am doing wrong? All my SPS are growing like crazy. I have dropped my 400 watt MH down to 6 hrs a day hoping that he would come back out, but so far no luck. I have not tried to feed him lately, should I? From my simple understanding you are not supposed to feed a nem with a gaping mouth.
 
How fast did you raise the salinity back up? I would not try to feed it until it gets healthy again. Anemones like salinity around 1.026 so i would slowly bring it up to there.
 
Agreed, give it time to recover it may take a while. I have had a haddoni that has basically been recovering from my lfs for about a month now. It's mouth was agape when I got it and it is just now starting to be consistantly closed.

I don't believe the shaded issue will be a problem short term. Once on the way to recovery, it should search out the light again.
 
2Addicted said:
How fast did you raise the salinity back up? I would not try to feed it until it gets healthy again. Anemones like salinity around 1.026 so i would slowly bring it up to there.
Click to expand...

I raised the salinity back up in about 5 hours. I felt that I could not leave the salinity that low or the whole tank would be dead the next morning. I wanted to start raising the salinity to 1.026 anyways however, I hate that I keep changing things.
 
you probably should have raised the salinity up slowly over a few days. most animals can handle a rapid drop in salinity much better than they can tolerate a rapid rise. same premise on putting a sick fish into hypo (rapid decrease) and then when the hypo is done you slowly increase the salnitiy over a few days.. At this point you should just wait it out and let it work on healing itself.
 
I will try to get pics tonight. The mouth is not open (ie there is no space between each side of the opening, it is however very long. It is not perfict circle, it is more like a slit.
 
More of a silt is fine, mine seems to be like that more often then not.

I would try to keep your salinity at 1.026, all of mine Haddonis seem to react to lower salinity.
 
That's a little bit of good news. I am going to go ahead and raise my salinity tonight. .002 of a change in a couple of hours should not be that bad. I have also noticed that he has a row of tentacles that look like they are missing ( about two tentacles wide and starting from the mouth about 2/3 the way out. ) My blue carpet never did this. Is this what is called "œdropping tentacles" or is this some damage from moving? I am sorry I am being so neurotic about this but I love this anemone and I would hate to see it go.

-DWD
 
dwdowney said:
That's a little bit of good news. I am going to go ahead and raise my salinity tonight. .002 of a change in a couple of hours should not be that bad. I have also noticed that he has a row of tentacles that look like they are missing ( about two tentacles wide and starting from the mouth about 2/3 the way out. ) My blue carpet never did this. Is this what is called "œdropping tentacles" or is this some damage from moving? I am sorry I am being so neurotic about this but I love this anemone and I would hate to see it go.

-DWD
Click to expand...

that sounds like it was fragged-the person just cut the line right through the mouth
 
I don't know about it being fragged. It is about 18" in diameter when fully open. It looks a lot better today than it did two days ago. I am thinking of feeding it tonight even though it is still in the shade. Is this a good move?
My overriding concern now is if I have too much light. I am currently running 3 X 400 MH (Ushio 14ks) over a 48" deep tank and my temp is maxing out at 81 every day (its 100 outside). All my SPS are good with these parameters but I am wondering if I need to cut out some light (shade screen) some of the tank for awhile so the nem gets use to it. If Nem colors are anything like SPS colors then it should like high light since it is red"¦ Right???
 
That is a fairly deep tank, so in the long term I don't think that will be too light. I have 2*250 over my 75, and my red Haddoni is very happy.

I would think that after 2 months it would be used to light, but I don't think it would hurt to use some window screening b/t the lights and the tank just to see how it reacts.

How much flow do you have in that tank? IME, Haddonis aren't fans of a whole lot of flow -- so it could actually be moving because of too much flow.
 
All-
My nem is now looking great and eating a full silver side every 7 days. He has gotten so big over the last month. The only problem is that with my aquiscaping (three lage colums and a full open sand bed) he has now decided to move to the backside of the tank where he as more space which means no one can see him. Is there any way to coach him to the front? If i bug him with a bunch of flow will that work?
 
I would give it a couple of days, and see what happens.

But, if it doesn't move back you can try changing the flow and see what happens. Mine seem to like having a "cove" of rocks around it, with its foot buried in the sandbed, under the rocks.
 
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