Sick Anemone???

[PoriferaBob]

How can you tell the difference between a anemone that is spitting out brown waste from uneaten food and one that is expelling its zooxanthale from stress?

 

[kellyandcarrie]

One loses it's color and the other one doesn't

 

[PoriferaBob]

is the spitting of zooxanthallae a sign of impending death?

Would it be easy to mistake zooxanthallae and waste??

My BTA has a stringy brown substance coming from its mouth which also happens to be gapping!! ( this is a new addition to my reef, only a couple days old)

I guess Im hoping that hes just pooping and not dieing......

but I would guess it sounds like thats not the case huh?

 

[dantodd]

sounds bad. BTA are some of the most durable anemones in the hobby though. If you provide it with a proper home and feed it properly it can recover from expulsion of its zoox. The gaping mouth however; is very troubling. Unless there is some obvious stress (short acclimation, high ph swing, unstable temp, ammonia or heavy phosphates in the water) that can be corrected or mitigated then the only thing you can do is wait and watch. As soon as his mouth starts closing try and feed it finely chopped silverside, squid, scallop or shrimp. If it doesn't close up in a few days I'd still try and feed it and see if it CAN close its mouth enough to digest some food.

 

[Ciarán]

A pic would really help to categorically say which of the two it is. If its stringy and slow to leave the oral cavity, its sounds very much like waste to me. Zooxanthellae are more like packets or splatters of brown rather than long filaments and tend to disperse quickly into the water (my only experience with zooxanthellae expulsion is from tridacnid clams however).