Carpet Anemone not what it used to be!

Hi,

I purchased a beautiful blue carpet anemone about a year ago now for my 29 Gal nano. I'm running a clamp on MH 150 Watt Lamp and a skimmer in one of the chambers in the back. It acclimated well and was stunning and huge for the longest period. See first pictures below. I had horrible success with clown fish at the start, all percs, all live bread, and all eaten or bodies never found. Then one day I decided to purchase a wild caught Maroon and it hosted immediately. I can't pinpoint exactly when, but the anemone started getting smaller and smaller, right about the time I introduced the large Maroon. Then recently, about 3 weeks ago or a little longer I replaced the bulb: 150W Megachrome Coral (14500K) Metal Halide Bulb - HQI Double-Ended. Since then, it seems like the anemone is 1/4 the size it was, not as bright blue and the maroon tends to hide behind it in the live rock during half the day, hosting and sleeping in the anemone at night. You can see what I mean by viewing the progression of pictures. It does eat though which makes me think that a) it is behaving this way because of the aggitation of the large clown b) introduction of a brand new bulb, c) all of the above. Also, I have noticed a reduction and near elimination of my coraline algae. Again, you can see in the pictures. These are todays water parameters: SG: 1.021-1.023, Ammonia: .3 mg/L, PH 8-8.50, Nitrate No3 5 mg/L, Alkilinity: 110 mg/L.

Any suggestions, answers. Much appreciated:

 

What are you using to measure the ammonia level with? You mean 0.3 ppm? You did not post a Ca, need the value to rule out an imbalance and contributing factor to loss of coralline.

I would raise the light. You probably bleached all your coralline with the new bulb. The anemone does not need to be as large/surface area now secondary to the new bulb.

What are you feeding the carpet?

I remember this anemone, I had the same set up lol.

 

Also, why did you list the salinity as a range, and why is it low?

 

Also, also, not sure about your alk reading. Was it in ppm? If so it's also low.

 

LOL...yes Alk and ammonia are in ppm. Also, my Ca is totally out of whack, I stopped counting after 50 drops of Reagent #3 (using Hagen Nutrafin test kits), thus stopped counting after 1,000(ppm). Retested my pH again with new test kit and also a bit high at 8.7.

Time for a water change. But any suggestions as to why parameters are so high and also what buffers/ brands do you recommend to keep Ca and pH in check in between water changes. I think you are right about the new bulb bleaching my coraline algae etc. Also, all of my grape calerpa has died off?!?! Could this all be caused by the new bulb? I'm assuming yes as this all happened after I changed the bulb.

:-/

 

Definitely time to do some water changes. I would not do large ones but smaller more frequent changes over the course of a week. For that small of tank with no stony corals it's probably better to do bi-monthly water changes than it would be to dose.

Not to sure what to make of the Caulerpa die off, could be the lighting.

 

Can you get your water tested at a LFS store to double check your numbers? High Ca would make sense with low alk, but how it got that way would be hard to guess. There are some salts with extremely high Ca though. If your chemistry is out of whack, the effects of a new bulb would be more severe.