Carpet anemone in nano reef

I have an 8 gal nano with 8lbs live sand tranfered from an established tank and 8 lbs of live rock with the usual clean up crew of snails and crabs. The blue carpet anemone has two paired clowns (tank raised) tending it. The anemone looked to be doing pretty good until recently. It seems listless and for the most part has been cycling through looking completely deflated and the size of a golf ball to pumped up and fully open and the size of my palm. After hand feeding it a small piece of fish the other day I noticed one of the clowns actually removed the piece of food from the anemone's mouth. What's up with that? I am also very lightly feeding the tank with arctipods. Any suggestions onthe status of the anemone?

 

Huck Finn =- its normal for clowns to take food away from a nem
the relationship is described by many as symbiotic but by some as parasitic
the clown gets the benefit and the nem gets pestered

what lighting have you got over the nano - as carpet nems are noted for being high light requiring creatures - with MH lighting recomended or a bank of T5s

water testing? do you know your general parameters - ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, phosphate, PH , DKH, Calc, Magnesium, SG and temperature?

get a photo up of the nem if possible and tell us more about the system its in and hopefully someone who knows more about these creatures will be able to advise


Steve

 

Hi Steve. I have a couple of images. How to I post to a specific thread?

 

Is this a mini-carpet anemone? If not, it may be doing poorly because the nano tank is too small for it and they require some pretty intense lighting.

CarpetAnemones

 

http://www.3reef.com/forums/reef-aquarium-articles-how-tos/how-post-pictures-3reef-69264.html

this is the method I use thanks to Lunatic69
you need a photo bucket account to down load images into and when down loaded
cut and paste the IMG code straight onto the reply you are typing

Steve

 

Images of carpet anomone in nano reef

Blow are links to images in the Gallery

 

That anemone doesn't seem to be doing too well it definatley need some major atention best of wishes though

 

Im gonna go out on a limb and say it kinda looks like the jbj series maybe 24g? And if it is, unless you got the HQI upgrade which most people don't because its super expensive and super hot then the two pc lights in there aren't enough for a nem on the bottom of the tank.

 

Or on the top of the tank. That anemone will surely die if you don't provide it with more lighting and a larger tank.

 

Anemone resue

These are my concerns as well. I have made arrangements to get it back into a larger tank with better lighting. Hope it makes it back.