Sebae attempts to attend pump party...resulting in a nice bleached Sebae example.

[AGYDAL]

When I first bought my Sebae I knew it was sorta sickly but never realized how sickly it was till I nursed it back to health then looked back on my photos...I really couldn't find too many good examples of bleached and non bleached Sebaes next to each other when I was trying to figure out how sickly this thing was after I bought it...well, this little guy solved that what's bleached vs. not bleached look like problem...

DISCLAIMER: Yes, I have a sebae in a nano **hangs head in shame** BUT I have a much larger system up and running and it will be moved there soon.

Also, sorry about the photo quality...took some of these pictures with my BlackBerry and some with my Android...I have a nice camera but for some reason I'm always forgetting to use it.

Unbeknownst to me, the JBJ cube tank I have has a straw sized hole about an inch and a half below where the water flows into the back chambers...as you can see from the following pictures nor did Mr. Sebae & his Crabby little buddy...poor guys never saw it coming...

Lets go exploring!
I'd had this Nem about 6 months at this point...
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Uh ohhh...you've really done it this time haven't you?
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Wowzers! Are you okay man? That's gonna leave a mark or two!
I felt awful for it, probably took me 30 minutes to get it free...that's not including the five minutes I took the little Kent algae scraper to it, thinking it was just attached to the back wall of the tank...I have a 150 Watt 14k halide light above the tank, it can be a challenge to peer into the back chambers while the lights on without blinding yourself, burning your ear and tanning the rest of your face on the fixture in the process; after a few minutes under the light you begin dosing your own special blend of saltwater into the tank too...I think I would have been less peeved at this point had I been the Nem...he was making me late for work...
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A few days later with "Dr. P. Crab"...the Nem attached fairly quickly (attached by time I returned from work) and the whole time it was healing the crab never really left the injury site...I didn't try and stop it, figured if anything it's walking around the injury site and pushing around with its claws might help increase circulation (or the Nem version of circulation) to the injury site helping heal time? I dunno seemed logical to me. I also upped it's feedings.
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About a month later...See the chunk missing? The injured part just sorta dissolved away over the course of a few days after the injury.
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About two months after the injury, it began to regenerate...this was the best picture I could get, it didn't take long for the re grown white parts to get their zoanthe (sp?) back. It was very interesting to watch, I wish I would have documented this part a bit better but I'm not going to lie to you, I was too distracted watching it...I would say at purchase time he was as white as this new growth...
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"Dr. P. Crab" has since moved his practice to my larger tank...we now have "Nurse Nemo-ette" looking after the Nem...(this is a bad picture it looks very pale I assure you it is not, it's green dirt colored still)
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Four and a half months later life is back to normal, still a bit asymmetric but without seeing it injured you'd never know...
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Full tank shot...not the greatest of pictures but it's better than nothing at all...I only use the fan on the fixture and have no heat issues...while the fan on the table is still fully operational it's from my grandparents basement, it's circa 1930 and weighs in at about 20lbs. (Not to mention you could probably turn the thing on high and throw a potato at one side and fries would come out the other) but I think it's cool and helps tie the light into the rest of the room.
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I hope the picture of the regrowth can help someone in determining the color and health of their new Sebae or better yet their intended purchase and weigh their risks...I know if I would have come across this picture and realized how bleached and near death mine was when I bought it, I never would have made the purchase or I would have returned it upon discovery. I found it very hard to distinguish colors in comparison pictures due to the lighting/retouching of the photographs and healthy and sickly ones are never in the same tank together...I was very lucky to be able to get it back to proper health after purchase and even luckier that it didn't do bad things to my tank when it was injured and healing...and Mr. Sebae is very lucky I was dumb/uninformed enough to buy him and then take the time and effort figure to out how to get him back to health.

If anyone out there would like, I have pictures from purchase to now...the growth rate and color change on this thing is impressive and I could post them if anyone cares to see.

 

[Blitzburggirl]

Of course we would like to see them!! And commentary too!!!

I really laughed at the whole tanning of the face, and late for work part

I burned my shoulder last night on a reflector while rescuing a fallen frag in my tank... LMAO

 

[WDLV]

I love to see threads like this!

 

[Silfer]

great thread mate.. i'm currently trying to nurse a bta that got stuck in a small powerhead, it took no damage but it has shrunk in size, lost alot of zoox and the tentacles are small now.

How did you nurse yours back to health? As mine is now hiding from the light.. it was fine before, keeps going behind the rock if I turn it back over.

 

[AGYDAL]

great thread mate.. i'm currently trying to nurse a bta that got stuck in a small powerhead, it took no damage but it has shrunk in size, lost alot of zoox and the tentacles are small now.

How did you nurse yours back to health? As mine is now hiding from the light.. it was fine before, keeps going behind the rock if I turn it back over.

Sorry about the long delay...impromptu trips to remote mountains and internet service aren't exactly a package deal haha!

Sebae need high light and like to attach to sandy places...bta's to my understanding don't and like rocks...at least this is what my memory is telling me (I haven't trusted my memory in years though)...but everything likes to eat it seems, so this is what I did.

I was told to just use freeze dried (it's what the anemone astronauts eat I guess) krill...even soaking and squishing it, the stuff kept floating on me and if the Sebae did get it down it usually didn't stay down for long...it did like when I took the shell off of the krills and cut them up into little pieces after it got stronger....I found what worked best was frozen cyclopees that I had let soak in some tank water (Soaking in freshwater makes food float more sometimes). I would turn off all my pumps and stuff and turkey baste the cyclo's onto the tentacles...to let it get a bit of a break for attempting to eat I'd leave all the pumps off for about 5 minutes.

I fed it very very small amounts everyday for a week or two...figured everyday feeding a little was better than a weekly krill for it to digest and maybe allowing for a more even energy burn...when its feeding response got better I would give it a few mysis with the very very small amount of cyclopeez EVERY OTHER day....I'm to the point now I suppliment it once a week since it's soo big in such a tiny tank. HTH.