Bad Father

I was gifted a long tentacle anemone from a past girlfriend. It's a big sucker, 10+ inches when it is swirling in the aquarium, if laid flat it would be over 20".
I love watching it gyrate, it's mesmerizing and looks like a big hurricane.

It had attached itself to a rock and I had it placed out by itself in the sand bed, when it would make a move for the stack I would simply rotate the rock...it stayed put.

Then I had to leave town for a few days and when I came back it was in the big stack of LR. I started moving a power head around to put flow right on it. It has crawled around and the other day I go up to notice it was covering a few coral frags. I repositioned a koralia, wedged it in the LR, and it was keeping the tentacles blowing out to sea. All was well until lastnight while eating dinner I had a bit of an avalanche. I am assuming the wedged koralia created a force that simply pushed too much...and the wall came crumbling down. Corals landing on their faces.

I got up and went to work. Shaking off corals and trying to re-stack the few pieces that had fallen. There was the flopping koralia, the culprit anemone, and the frustration of what had just happened. I lost it. I started beating the anemone. First an open hand slap and then I was flicking it and cussing it.

When I came to, I saw that there were now a few tentacles floating to the bottom of the aquarium. About 4 pieces and the biggest approximately 3 inches in length.

I finished restoring the decor and placed the frags and a big favia back on the stack. Noticing a tear on the favias' skin I added a little iodine and turned off the light.

I know that was a long intro to my question but here it is:

After ripping a few tentacles off of this guy, will it cause any perminate damage? I imagine this happens in nature all the time but wanted to make sure.

I think the anemone got the message and has relocated itself to a more acceptable area this morning. We'll see if it sticks around or gets ballsey and goes back over to the coral side.

It was a lot easier to dump the girl than it will be to get rid of this anemone, however there comes a time to fish or cut bait.

R

 

I don't know why but this made me laugh soooo hard. My co-workers were looking at me like I was nuts!!

 

Dude,I hope you don't have any kids....lol.

 

Did you cry later and tell the anemone that you only hit it because you love it? That you're trying to make it a better anemone so that you don't have to hit it anymore?


ROFLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!!!! OMFG, I can't stop laughing!!! It has me crying over here!! Ahahahahahaaaaa!

 

Were you saying "Trust me this hurts me more than it hurts you"?

 

haha.. you slapped your anemone.. open handed. HAHAHAHA

 

i can only say one thing to this........LMAO

 

All of your responses have gotten me laughing now. I am happy that the joy was spread around, well to all except you know who....

I did not offer it any constructive criticism during the assault. Just a five fingered hand and four letter words.

I am thankful that there is not a Department of Anemone Serveces or I would have had some explaining to do today. I'm sure he would have told.

I have never had this problem with people and perhaps it was me who felt intimidated and scared. Probably cost me $100/hr to find out.

Everything is looking good this evening though. The anemone is in a good spot now and doesn't have a lot of options on where to go, unless it goes into the stack and reemerges somewhere. Frags are re-glud and I hope they will be happy.

One side note. At my local Big Lots store they have Locktite super glue GEL (4g) there for a dollar a tube. This is $2.44 at my local Mega-Low-Mart. I bought them out!

 

Welcome to having an anemone. If you don't want to deal with them walking around, take it to the LFS. Don't leave it in your tank and then rip it's tentacles off because it walked into a certain spot or someplace you didn't like it. Frankly, that's cruel, and while others laughed I feel bad for it. I doubt it got the message. It's probably very stressed at the moment. It's a living creature dude, the powerhead and rockslide was your fault, not the anemones.

The reactions to this post kind of disappoint me. Going postal on an anemone is no way to solve a problem. Find what it doesn't like and fix it. It will wander around until it finds an acceptable place to reside. Move your corals when it finds a good place to plant his foot. It may take up shelter near a coral. Move the coral. Or get rid of the poor anemone. Maybe it needed better lighting or didn't like the flow. Unreasonable request for it to live somewhere it doesn't like.

 

I agree with the above. Nature is nature - you can't train it like you train a child! This is why it annoys me when people get angry at fish for killing their other fish etc. - it's more the responsibility of the aquarist than the fish itself!