Anemone dying?

[keddre]

tank specs:
55 gallon tank
20ish gallon sump
maybe a half gallon sump in the fuge (slowly expanding but paused due to current situation)
7-8" Deep Sand Bed (no black gas bubbles -can't think of the gas name-)

Filtration:
the mentioned fuge
Caulerpa prolifa rhizomes (if this even counts)
Carbon
Algae that grows in the tank
no skimmer, no socks

Feedings:
2 cubes of assorted frozen foods
1 small shrimp to anemone (this stopped a week ago)
5 ml of live pytho twice a day
one sheet of seaweed/day

Other "problems":
corraline(spelling?) algae always growing up the glass where my urchin avoids
diatoms due to me stupidly using silica sand

Fish:
2 engineer gobies (trying hard to get these out without tearing up the tank, any ideas other than the failed bottle method?)
2 maroon clowns
2 bumble-bee gobies
1 guppy
1 one-spot foxface (juvenile that I should give away but really don't want to...I know, shame on me)
3 banggai cardinals
1 yellow spot watchman goby

inverts (probably forgetting some but you get the jist):
2 feather dusters
1 flame scallop
1 sea hare
1 tiger pistol shrimp
1 long spine urchin
1 long tentacle anemone
3 red Cortez hermits
3 blue legged hermits
1 turbo snail
4 asterea snails
1 tiger sand conch

Corals:
1 leather toadstool
zoas
assorted mushrooms

 

[Amoo]

Ok so home depot/Lowes play sand, it happens, not a biggie. It's going to suck for a very long time but it is what it is here.

Coraline is a good thing, use an old credit card or one of those grocery store discount cards to scrape it off.

So you either have the greatest deep sand bed in the entire history of the hobby or there is literally no way you have 0 Nitrates. You've done a decent job of getting a good assortment of CuC including fish selection to remove visible algae for the most part on a daily basis, but all those things eat that algae and they all poop. You also feed probably about the amount somebody with a heavily stocked tank 3-4 times your size.
Right now you literally have no means of removing Nitrates and Phosphates other then your weekly water changes and I can promise you that with your feeding regimen you've only slowed the problem.

So for starters, let's eliminate the idea that you're taking the tank down at the start of the semester because we can get it to a place that you can maintain it at an affordable cost throughout.

Second you need to stop feeding so much like ASAP. You legitimately need like 2/3 50% water changes. Salt is expensive and sucks to do, but we need to get you back to a decent starting point since it's obvious your test kits are NOT giving you the right numbers.

With your tank I wouldn't feed more then half a cube in morning, half in the evening and about a third of a sheet of seaweed a day. And that's being generous. Ideally if you can split that 1 cube into 2 feedings it would help until we can get an export method back online.

Next we NEED to get you either an Algae Turf Scrubber or an Algae Reactor. I think we can DIY you a reactor cheaper then a Turf Scrubber, but it's probably pretty close. Biopellets is also a good option and it's something I'm just beginning to play with myself but they have been shown to work.

The idea here is we need to do this on a budget. I THINK we can pull all of this off for around a benjamin and that would get you to a place where you only had to do small weekly water changes and fish food through the semester.

We can get into much more of that later. Literally when you get home tonight do as large of a water change as you can and don't feed the fish if you fed them already this morning. Check the status of the Nem as we need to see if he's about to go Nuclear. If he's still looking really bad after a large water change and a little time to settle then we can make a call on what to do with him.

I need to go help my wife pull a calf at about 5:30 est then I have an event I have to be at from 9-midnight, so you'll either hear from me between 8-9 or after midnight tomorrow morning when you wake up.

Please do a water change ASAP. I would place any amount of money on the fact your nitrates are through the roof.

 

[keddre]

After Extreme phone calls and googling, it's down to:
my API or the Marineland 6in1 dip sticks to get results today, try my other lfs that has funny hours to see if they have better kits or amazon and wait two weeks because I don't have prime

 

[keddre]

Ok so home depot/Lowes play sand, it happens, not a biggie. It's going to suck for a very long time but it is what it is here...

This is why pictures is better than my memory, I have an ATS but it barely has anything on it

Can do the water change, trust me I have plenty of salt.

And I'm sorry if this comes of smart but it's an honest "question": I feed all that but about 2-3 hours later there is no food left in the tank. And I'm talking about those small sheets that you get from petco, not the big nori ones. I'll check in later

 

[SashimiTurtle]

See if you can afford a Red Sea Pro reef foundation kit from BRS or Marine Depot... that'll give you Calcium, Alkalinity and magnesium and their algae control pro kit does nitrates and phosphates. Salifert is another trusted kit brand, I just don't have experience with them. I'm surprised you don't have an LFS with those kits...

 

[Amoo]

So just to clear something up before we go too much further, I'm a "from the hip shooter", I'm going to tell you exactly what my thoughts are. At no point in time are you going to offend me by asking a simple question. I'm also not going to get offended if you ask a question and provide evidence like the one you just asked. The real only way you're going to offend me other then the obvious ways, would be to simply argue with every little thing I was trying to help with at which point I probably would just stop posting.

Ok so you have an ATS, that's REALLY good. We need to figure out why it's not pulling anything. So give me the background infos on how long it's been up...etc and get some good picture of it, the setup, the lighting and the screen when you get home. That will go a long way.

In regards to your question, fish are a bunch of dirty little liars. You can honestly feed them once every 3/4 days and they will survive. Now almost none of us feel right about that and we can make them healthier by feeding them more frequently, but just like with any pet, smaller meals more frequently go a lot farther then large meals here and there. I can assure you you're tank is not going to starve to death on a full cube of food and a piece of algae a day. The reason your fish are a bunch of liars is because they will literally sit there and gorge themselves as full as they possibly can if you let them, turn around and make a nice fat nutrient source and the next time you walk by the tank act like they haven't been fed in weeks and are famished.

In regards to your test kit, let's just call it a loss for right now. I do have prime and might be able to get your something a little quicker, let me check amazon and see what I can find and I'll get back with you about it. For now let's just move forward with the assumption that it's wrong and if it turns out I'm wrong, I'll mail you a decent test kit out of my own pocket, that should at least help offset some of the salt cost you're about to go through.

 

[Amoo]

This is what you want, even with Prime I wouldn't be able to get it there until next week so you may want to just order it yourself if you can. Click on the "Other Sellers" part and you can get it for $43.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B006L49S1Q/ref=psdc_3048858011_t5_B00ONI38TK

 

[keddre]

May I quote homer Simpson when I say "doh" and hide in the bushes... When does this happen, when I remove the lighting from my sump. What's in my sump that needs lighting, my ATS. My air headedness killed my lta.

I can take it from here, massive water change, put lighting back and might as well throw caulerpa in while I'm at it.

Thanks @Amoo and sorry I wasted your time with my stupidity

 

[keddre]

Am I right in thinking this is dead or can it still bounce back? As you can see my maroon is still guarding it

 

[Lance M.]

Still looks alive. I would make all the changes recommended and give it a chance.

If is actually falling apart, with a horrible smell, then it is dead.

 

[Amoo]

it's only stupidity if you don't learn something from it. It still looks like it's got a shot, I would check it again after WC and then again in the morning. Check my Cipro sticky, I have a rating chart, keep track of its progress, if it gets too bad then it's time to toss it.

 

[Congaken]

The shrimp from Wal-Mart could have been soaked in some kind of persevitive..the reason I say this I bought shrimp from supermarket before and my anemone love it ... did it again the next day he was not doing well..he finally died shrimp was in his digestive track in eaten...since then even if fish monger tells you that it is fresh ....beware..

especially wal-mart...there shrimp is packaged...not fresh...your problem...

 

[keddre]

Thanks for your help again everyone. I still need to do another water change, but when I looked in the tank this morning (while still a little floppy) she was already back in her old resting spot. Thanks again

 

[keddre]

With another water change, I have mixed news

The good:
Her foot is reattached and she's doing the thing where she inflates then flops, then reinflates...

The bad:
While she didn't lose her tan color, she did lose her green tips.

Thanks

 

[Amoo]

This is fantastic news in my opinion. While I know it may seem temporarily disheartening, loss of some colors is nothing in comparison to where you thought you were headed. In my experience, if they are still attaching themselves your chances of saving it are exponentially higher then if it won't attach at all. You can get the color back, you can't get the nem back after it's gone.

 

[ChiCity]

What heater do you have that won't get below 82°. This is too high. Check out cobalt neotherm heaters. IMO they are the best heaters out there. Rock stable water temps and they are indestructable. I keep my tanks at 78. Nems are sensitive. ATO is a MUST with any saltwater tank, regardless of inhabitants.

Didn't neotherms burn out (literally!) and cause fires and crashed tanks in a bunch of people's systems last year?

 

[SashimiTurtle]

Didn't neotherms burn out (literally!) and cause fires and crashed tanks in a bunch of people's systems last year?

Small batch of the larger heaters had a production flaw where the thermal gel was not fully covering the element. This caused the element to over heat and cause a failure. There was a long time where you could not get a 150w or 200w heater because they were fixing the problems. The problems are fixed now.

 

[SashimiTurtle]

Didn't neotherms burn out (literally!) and cause fires and crashed tanks in a bunch of people's systems last year?

More like 2-3 years ago, also.

 

[ChiCity]

Good to know, I've been avoiding neotherm like the plague...
I might look into one since most people seem to like the accuracy of them

 

[fnlyreefready]

Did it die?