Help! Yellow Carpet Anemone

alfredshouse · #1 02-08-2009, 09:30 PM

I bought a Yellow Carpet Anemone from King Ed last Saturday. I told the guy there that I was running VHOs and he said that would be fine. Ive watched him go from having long plump tubes with bright purple tips to a squished up, shrizzled lump that is closed up. Ive fed him krill and hes still not happy. My parameter are PH 1.023, NH 0.08, NO2 0.1 etc and I dont know what to do.

Zoaelite · #2 02-08-2009, 10:05 PM

It's not uncommon for Carpet Anemones to be stressed out during a move. What is the size of your tank, the current lights you are running and the current flow. Any tissue necrosis or is it just really sucked up?
Levi

alfredshouse · #3 02-08-2009, 10:47 PM

The tank is 160gl and I have a FX5 filter and a Koralia 4. The tubes dont really look dead they just look shrizzled.

alfredshouse · #4 02-08-2009, 10:49 PM

Oh yeah, my lights a 6 VHO and 2 are actinic. Measuring 4ft each in a tank 6ft long, I have them staggered.

Zoaelite · #5 02-08-2009, 11:08 PM

Please, do yourself a favor and take that FX5 and sell it! Great for freshwater but can cause some major problems a little later for salt. It sounds like the guy is just a little stressed out, possibly from the tank move, give him a few weeks (if he puffs up he's ready to eat otherwise DONT feed him). Could be the lights, could be the system but if he doesn't get better its either an indicator of something wrong with the system or something wrong with him.
Either way, good luck!
Levi

Delphinus · #6 02-09-2009, 12:46 AM

Can't really add more advice here, but .. I do have some bad news for you. Yellow tells me two things: one, most likely it is a gigantea and two, it has no zooxanthellae (yellow carpets with a healthy zooxanthellae population appear more brown or sometimes green). Bad news on both accounts because gigantea's have a *terrible* survivalibity rate from collection adapting into captivity, two, it's going to be something of an uphill struggle to eek it along into that zone of "adapted into captivity." Once there, gigantea's are beautiful carpets and tend to be rock-solid, easygoing aquarium specimens but the rough reality is that it's maybe 1 in 10 that will get to that point. I'm not trying to make you lose all hope, I'm sorry, but the flip side is there kind of really is no sugar coating this, carpets have horrendous survival rates and it's nothing we as aquarists can truly influence: either the damage is done prior to purchase, or some specimens simply don't have what it takes to adapt to captive life outside of the tropics. We don't really know why.