Hi there:
First, I would like to thank Minh and the many others for their invaluable help during my giant carpet anemone adventure! Also, I would like to apologize for this somewhat lenghty thread, but I think it may be worth your attention.
I have been doing reefing for about ten years now, and I think I have been pretty successful. I have a ten year old reef tank that is thriving, and still has many of the fish and corals I purchased about 10 years ago (including a clown that I purchased the first day). I also am keeping some other aquaria, including a seahorse tank with now a five year old seahorse couple. All this is not to say that I have not had set-backs, but I have been able to overcome them through extensive reasearch and experimentation.
I set out to establish a tank dedicated to giant carpet anemones about a year ago (without having read enough about it). I let the tank mature for several months before adding a beautiful, at the time healthy appearing anemone into the tank. It did fine for about 3 weeks before perishing. Then I recently bought (now, in retropect unhealthy) carpet from a fellow reefer who claims to have had this carpet in his tank for two years. It died 3 days after being introduced into my tank.
I decided these failures are unacceptable. I did more reasearch, and tried Minh's approach. Without going into too much detail my anemonoe got sick, I treated it per Minh's protocol, put it back inot my tank, and it was just hanging on again. I eventually hypothesized that clearly something was wrong in my tank (even tough the clowns are happy, and some other small frags of coral were doing perfectly). I pinned it down to the fact that I would stir the sand somewhat heavily everytime I would put the carpet back to make space. I will now explain how I came to this comclusion.
As you may or may not know there are basically three types of bugs. Gram positive, gram negative, and anerobes. Now this is somewhat oversimplified, but it will suffice for this discussion. Now, I retreated the carpet with cipro, and it did not improve. I added penicillin for better gram positive coverage, and that did not help things either. Only after adding metronidazole (for anerobe coverage) did the carpet bounce back, and now it is doing beautifully (I also added a UV sterilizer to my system).
This is what I am hypothesizing:
When anemones are really sick, they have an overwhelming infection.
When anemones are just hanging on, but not thriving I am sure there are many possible explanations, but I think the primary reason is not the usual suspects (water parameters, othe tank inhabitants, food, light ect). I think the anemone has likely an indolent infection it cannot ward off, but it is not so bad that it is dying. I think the coverage with penicillin, ciprofloxacin, and metronidazole would cover most of these bugs. I know my sample is ONE, but I think this is an interesting hypotheis I would like tested in YOUR tanks if your carpets are not doing well and you are scratching your heads.
IF any of youo in this hobby and has access to a microbiology lab it would be very interesting to actually swab around the mouth or the stomach of sick anemones, culture this, and then use the isolated bugs to test for antibiotic susceptibility it would make some great reasearch. I have looked into this at work (I an an anesthesiologist), but my institution is too large, and there is too much red tape.
To go further, I think probably a large percentage of all coral in our tanks become sick because of bacterial infection, and what I have said about carpet anemone treatment can possibly be applied to all coral.
Thanks for listening, and I look forward to your comments!
Regards,
Carsten
PS: I use a 10 gallon tank with a powerhead, hang-on filter, heater, egg-crate for separating these items form the rest of the tank, and a AI prime light at 100%. I change the water 100% daily, and add 500mg cipro, 250 penicillin, and 500mg metronidazilewhen I set up the tank. I am confident 250 of cipro, 250 penicillin, and 250mg metronidazole would be just fine also. I am not really sure how these break down in an aquarium with/without light, but if someone is interested to run pharmacokinetics on this it would be interesting!
First, I would like to thank Minh and the many others for their invaluable help during my giant carpet anemone adventure! Also, I would like to apologize for this somewhat lenghty thread, but I think it may be worth your attention.
I have been doing reefing for about ten years now, and I think I have been pretty successful. I have a ten year old reef tank that is thriving, and still has many of the fish and corals I purchased about 10 years ago (including a clown that I purchased the first day). I also am keeping some other aquaria, including a seahorse tank with now a five year old seahorse couple. All this is not to say that I have not had set-backs, but I have been able to overcome them through extensive reasearch and experimentation.
I set out to establish a tank dedicated to giant carpet anemones about a year ago (without having read enough about it). I let the tank mature for several months before adding a beautiful, at the time healthy appearing anemone into the tank. It did fine for about 3 weeks before perishing. Then I recently bought (now, in retropect unhealthy) carpet from a fellow reefer who claims to have had this carpet in his tank for two years. It died 3 days after being introduced into my tank.
I decided these failures are unacceptable. I did more reasearch, and tried Minh's approach. Without going into too much detail my anemonoe got sick, I treated it per Minh's protocol, put it back inot my tank, and it was just hanging on again. I eventually hypothesized that clearly something was wrong in my tank (even tough the clowns are happy, and some other small frags of coral were doing perfectly). I pinned it down to the fact that I would stir the sand somewhat heavily everytime I would put the carpet back to make space. I will now explain how I came to this comclusion.
As you may or may not know there are basically three types of bugs. Gram positive, gram negative, and anerobes. Now this is somewhat oversimplified, but it will suffice for this discussion. Now, I retreated the carpet with cipro, and it did not improve. I added penicillin for better gram positive coverage, and that did not help things either. Only after adding metronidazole (for anerobe coverage) did the carpet bounce back, and now it is doing beautifully (I also added a UV sterilizer to my system).
This is what I am hypothesizing:
When anemones are really sick, they have an overwhelming infection.
When anemones are just hanging on, but not thriving I am sure there are many possible explanations, but I think the primary reason is not the usual suspects (water parameters, othe tank inhabitants, food, light ect). I think the anemone has likely an indolent infection it cannot ward off, but it is not so bad that it is dying. I think the coverage with penicillin, ciprofloxacin, and metronidazole would cover most of these bugs. I know my sample is ONE, but I think this is an interesting hypotheis I would like tested in YOUR tanks if your carpets are not doing well and you are scratching your heads.
IF any of youo in this hobby and has access to a microbiology lab it would be very interesting to actually swab around the mouth or the stomach of sick anemones, culture this, and then use the isolated bugs to test for antibiotic susceptibility it would make some great reasearch. I have looked into this at work (I an an anesthesiologist), but my institution is too large, and there is too much red tape.
To go further, I think probably a large percentage of all coral in our tanks become sick because of bacterial infection, and what I have said about carpet anemone treatment can possibly be applied to all coral.
Thanks for listening, and I look forward to your comments!
Regards,
Carsten
PS: I use a 10 gallon tank with a powerhead, hang-on filter, heater, egg-crate for separating these items form the rest of the tank, and a AI prime light at 100%. I change the water 100% daily, and add 500mg cipro, 250 penicillin, and 500mg metronidazilewhen I set up the tank. I am confident 250 of cipro, 250 penicillin, and 250mg metronidazole would be just fine also. I am not really sure how these break down in an aquarium with/without light, but if someone is interested to run pharmacokinetics on this it would be interesting!
