What can cause a healthy BTA to die in 4 hours?

[Lord Nemo]

As the title says, my perfect bta specimen died, and was left with nothing but a hollow foot (just a ring with maybe 5 tentacles) which my scarlet skunk cleaner shrimp was feasting on it when I got back from school. I haven't checked tank parameters yet, however none of my fish, corals, or inverts seem to be bothered by it...i scooped it out just recently and tossed it. I've only had it for a few days, but I'm left scratching my head on how it turned into lunch? Only thing I can think of was it moved to find a better spot and got swept into the current, and succumbed to predation.

Thanks!

 

[sc50964]

Watch out for toxin released by a dying nem or at least check your water coz it would contaminate water real fast.

 

[Lord Nemo]

Should I check for ammonia? I was under the impression that it was the stinging cells released into the tank that presented the biggest issue and unless the anemone was decaying, one doesn't need to check water parameters? Correct me if I'm wrong though. Thanks for the speedy reply!

 

[sc50964]

Yep. Ammonia. It would also stink up the water real fast.

 

[Lord Nemo]

Well this is a bad time to have the "Reef Master Test Kit" that doesn't have ammonia :/. I suppose I'll just do a water change.

 

[sc50964]

Yep... WC is always good. Removing any of its remains is also needed. Does it smell bad now?

 

[Lord Nemo]

No foul smell. Just smells like algae, I checked all of my power heads, and I'm not seeing anything. All I've found was a rogue tentacle in the sand, which I'm about to siphon out.

 

[sc50964]

Well. Sounds okay I guess. But better check water as soon as you can. I remember once I had a nem that died overnight and it got sucked into a power head that spread its remains all over the place. It stunk so much, made me want to barf.

 

[coit]

Did you feed it recently? I had something similar happen to my BTA breeding tank after feeding them some green prawns (had previously used the same shop for raw seafood with no problems). As far as anyone could guess, the ones from that batch had likely been treated with either formalin or a huge dose of sodium metabisulfite.

Caused 12 of them to basically rot from the inside out and turn into grey goop, with a healthy looking hollow shell around the decayed guts and foot. They had an unbelievably bad smell of decay and happened within a few hours of feeding. Whatever it was acted as basically a contact poison, another smaller BTA that hadn't been fed survived fine and was grown up and split successfully many times later, but even brief contact with the prawns resulted in the entire internals being flung out as a grey soupy mess.

 

[Lord Nemo]

Sorry for the late response. I never fed it, but it's still a mystery to me on how it succumbed. None of the tank inhabitants were affected fortunately.

 

[Anemone12]

Was the salinity high? Mine went to 1.026 to 1.030 and my anemone died in 2 days just melted away instantly.