Anemone Egestion

[brettonw]

Do y'all see this? I have 7 small E. quadricolor (bubble tip) anemones (BTA) in my tank, and they exhibit an egestion behavior about half a day after eating (deflate and turn themselves inside out to expel waste). I've observed this before in my tanks and I think it is normal based on reading decades of postings and literature from the science side. But... I asked the LFS that sourced 5 of the clones, and they innocuously say they've never seen this. Now I'm doubting myself. I'm not sure if it's disingenuous behavior on their part, or if there's something wrong in my tanks that causes the egestion. The cinnamon clowns (A. melanopus) that make this colony their home happily move from 'nem to 'nem when they deflate, but I also see the fish working to clear the waste and get the 'nem to reinflate. I'm not a diver so I don't know if this happens in the wild, either, but I'd love to see more discussion of this.

 

[Jekyl]

Few questions. How old is the tank? What are your parameters? What lighting? Have some white light pics?

While nems do inflate and deflate, turning inside out isn't normal.

 

[brettonw]

This tank is about 6 months old now, ignore the reflection in the top left. All of my water chemistry is in normal ranges. Perhaps "turning inside out" is hyperbolic, but the animal goes "pah" really slowly, then reinflates like everything is fine.

 

[Jekyl]

Beautiful tank. I wanted to just rule out the normal things when these posts pop up.

My 13" rainbow can shrink down to the size of some big league chew. It also happens just about every day.

Unless they start looking gross or you can really tell something is wrong, i wouldnt fret too much.

 

[vetteguy53081]

This tank is about 6 months old now, ignore the reflection in the top left. All of my water chemistry is in normal ranges. Perhaps "turning inside out" is hyperbolic, but the animal goes "pah" really slowly, then reinflates like everything is fine.

While this happens on occasion, they will ball up and do this when :
Nitrates become elevated
They have just eaten
Light intensity too bright
When stressed
When evacuating Food that cant be digested

 

[brettonw]

I've fiddled with the light brightness a lot over the past few months, and they definitely open bigger and broader with higher light settings so I stick with that. I've also fiddled with temperature, and found that a slightly lower temperature results in bigger opening and less frequent egestion. I don't want to run the tank too cold, though. The nitrates are typically very low, I'm working to keep them up, if anything (a macroalgae refugium keeps them low).

These two anemones are roughly the same size and this picture gives a good idea of what an egestion looks like. There is a bunch of brown mucus inside the mouth cavity, so I expect it's just waste, and the clowns help clear it away.

I feed pretty heavily, so there's a good amount of floating food when I do, and it's clear the anemones eat some of it. They catch the bits and close over the food.

The main place I've seen the egestion behavior discussed in literature is Ron Shimek's writings, but there's some interesting research linking zooxanthellae density to feeding behavior among cniderians. This suggests needing *more* light and water-based nutrients.

Is egestion observed in the wild? I understand that anemones in the wild probably don't bother eating in the traditional sense as they get plenty of nutrients from the host clowns waste feeding their symbiotic algae, so they wouldn't need to expel anything.

I wonder if the LFS is able to create a similar situation, or if they feed the tank after hours and their BTAs have all puffed back up by the time they are open.