Animal Husbandry Failure

[squeezix]

I have deep obsessive attitude toward my pets, and deep realization of the fact that I create their environment.

I'm a conscientous reefer who needs help Only in the hobby since october 2001. See below for tank specs.

I got a Chaledonuria Varians slug to take care of flatworms, and an anemone for pet from MDLive in LA. I trust my supplier and the animals seemed extremely healthy on arrival, so I acclimate. For an hour.

C. Varians dead in 24 hours, even though well acclimated and vigorously eating red Acoel Flatworm.

Hetetrectic crispa showing mesenteries and very little life.

Firstly look at my tank profile and see my setup.
I only test alk, Kalk, Ph.

The original occupants, Corralimorphs, Zoos, leather and some LPS/SPS doing great. Pods decimated, maybe by an errant blenny who has passed. Spaghettie, Vermetid, Sebellastarte worms reproducing. great reef flora and fauna. Covolitruba Flatworms infesting, but not harming corals.Caulastrea, Wellsophyllia, Trachyphyllia,Montipora, Hydnophora growing and doing well.

I am no expert, but definitely a concientous member of the hobby. i research my livestock (80% of the time BEFORE I purchase.)

C. Varians is dead, crap happens, little is known about these animals.

Heteractis Crispa is in bad shape, he should not be.

Anyone who can provide chemical analysis of my water, most metals, stront, molyb, copper will be rewarded, what do you want, cash or artwork?

Sop far I'm doing so-so at keeping my reef thriving and making my corals grow.

Please help, because I have my eyes on more challenging inverts. I'm hopeful to bring H. Crispa back to life. If I'm not able, I will stick with easier inverts (shrooms, leathers and zoos are the prettiest occupants in my home)

When I grow up and own a home, I wouls like a 100+ reef, aclosed system for an octopus, and a seahorse tank in the bedroom. One day i will do this, but for now, i have a small reef and ned advice. I've read all of our internet resouces. I need your opinions and help now.

 

[Anonymous]

Darlin', a big part of your problem is the animals you're choosing. H. crispa[/i] is known for being difficult, and best left to those with extensive experience.

Also, acclimation for an hour isn't a "rule", it's a start. Some animals need hours over which to acclimate. You have yet to mention any reference books in your library, why is this? Anyone who thinks they can do this stuff without a decent library will soon discover they're sadly mistaken. Start off with two or three books, I'll suggest Bob Fenner's "The Conscientious Marine Aquarist", Martin Moe, Jr.'s "Marine Aquarium Handbook", and either Eric Bornemann's last coral book (sorry, don't recollect the name) or Anthony Calfo. Allelopathy, for instance, is an issue far too many are igorant of.

Researching 80% of the time isn't enough, it's got to be 100%, again, in my opinion.

Why do you only test for alkalinity, calcium, and pH? Those are not the only parameter good water quality makes. If you're doing water changes as you should, why would you assume that it's heavy metals that are your problem? In my opinion, you can't.

Clearly, you can see that it's time reassess how you're going about this, and I truly believe you've got to start with the literature. Good luck, eh?

 

[Anonymous]

Squeezix, the only thing I can re-emphasize from SM's pointers above is to acclimate all invertebrates Sloooooowwwwwly. I have lost a few cleaners and brittles in the past when I rushed and tried to do a quick one hour accumulation. What I do now is set the animal in a bucket with it's bag water and then use a piece of airline tubing with a loose knot in it to siphon from my tank to the bucket. I tigthen the knot up so the drip is very very slow and let it be. For instance I just moved my fire shrimp from my nano to my 75 gallon - I started the drip, went to work and came home and bucket was only about 3/4 full and shrimp was fine and into tank he went alive.

More so than crustacea, echinoderms need very very slow acclimation IME - even so here improper handling or damage during collection does many in no matter what.


HTH

-Mike

 

[Anonymous]

Hey Techno, try the little airline valves, much finer control (an expense, I know, but I love 'em).

 

[Anonymous]

SM - you are right but the ones I have are cheesy and are 2 part , one with valve and half of barb and separate piece with other barb and I've had them come apart and drip more water than I wanted. I guess I'm a Luddite at heart and like the low tech way of doing stuff

 

[squeezix]

Sea Maiden, I do own ALL of the books you mentioned and have read them cover to cover, and refer to them almost daily. When I said I took a very serious interest in this hobby, I was not speaking lightly. I did my research before buying these animals, as objectively as I could.

I would not have bought these two animals unless I thought I had an educated chance at success. I knew the nudi might not make it, but I do not want to overstock by trying flatworm-eating fish. Thank you for the acclimation tips. IME without proper acclimation, the animals never "take" to their environment. I am worried that my problem is not acclimation. The reason I don't test EVERY parameter in my tank (iodine, strontium, magnesium, copper, boron) Is that I do not use any additives, only B-Ionic two-part.

I forgot to mention I do test ammonia nitrate and nitrite, all show a big fat 0 and have since last April.


The anemone looks melted down, but is still somewhat alive.

 

[Anonymous]

I'll toss in my .02 and agree with what some of the others have said. It sounds like you're doing your research (for the most part, and even if you do come across as a little testy and defensive about it). But I find a couple of things rather difficult to believe:

1. If you've done as much research as you claim, you would have known that just about any anemone is ranked right up there with some of the most difficult to keep corals. They're tough, even for very experienced reefkeepers. Also, with all that research I would think that you would have known that a 1-hr acclimation (which you don't really explain--is that one hour of floating the bag, one hour of drip, one hour of adding cups of water to the bag??) is a bare, bare, bare minimum for most animals, even hardy fish like clowns. For example, pretty much anything that goes into my tank gets a minimum of a 3-4hr drip acclimation, or until the acclimatization water is minimum 75-80% destination tank water.

2. From your post regarding your tank's contents:

38 AGA custom overflow by LFS (Ocean Reef In Ft. Lauderdale)
15 Gallon custom built sump
DIY PVC Plumbing
Mag 7 return pump
Aquafuge 18
SeaLife Systems #75 Skimmer
90+ Lbs. Live Rock, mostly Fiji some Caribbean
80+ Lbs. Live Sand (5" average DSB)

I find it extraordinarily difficult to believe that you have 80+ lbs of sand and 90+ lbs of rock in a 38 gal tank. You also mention a long list of tank inhabitants and I wonder how quickly they were added.

I don't mean to come across as mean or flaming or anything. Quite the opposite; we want to help. But frankly, I don't think we have quite the full picture here.

Cheers,
John

 

[squeezix]

I may actually have a hundred pounds of rock, there's a ton in the sump and aquafuge. I have a 6" DSB, which was four 20 lb bags of wet activated caribsea sand. So dry I'm not sure it weighed that much, but I didn't buy it dry.

I acclimated the bag water for an hour after floating the bag for a little while. I used a little less than a 1/4 cup of water at a time. When the anemone arrived, there was only a 1/4 cup of water in the bag. The way I did it was did a 5 gallon water change, aused the water in the tank to put in the bag. After I was sure there was very litle bag water left, I dipped the bag and the anemone in the recently changed water, flushing everything out, so I don't think much shipping water got ion my system .

 

[Anonymous]

Okay, so it was a transshipped anemone, or at least one that had been in its bag for quite awhile (and from the sounds of it in very little water, as well, correct?)? When animals are shipped like that, I've heard (never done the testing m'self) that pH (among other things) can swing dramatically during that shipment, and that even opening the bag quickly can cause abrupt changes in the chemistry of that little amount of water in the bag. So when you dumped in that quarter cup of water from your tank, yes the water was healthy, but the anemone had grown accustomed to what was surrounding it, and ka-bam, you've got some severe shock to it. My guess is that's probably the primary cause of the anemone not making it.

 

[Anonymous]

Nothing like drip acclimation.

 

[Anonymous]

To add, and I may be thinking overly cautiously here, and let me also add the disclaimer that in 15 yrs or so in the hobby I've never ordered anything alive by mail order. I've been lucky to have a few decent lfs's around and have been willing to wait for good animals to become available locally.

So anyway, if it had been me, here's what I would have done:

- Put the bag in a bucket or pitcher or something else relatively large and upright.

- Puncture the bag with a needle and let it 'breathe' for a half hour or so.

- Put a few larger holes in the bag and let it 'breathe' for another half hour or so.

- Empty the bag & animal into the bucket/pitcher.

- Start a drip-siphon from the main tank into the bucket at just about a drop per second, maybe a little slower if there wasn't much shipping water.

- Give it at least 2 hours, then increase drip rate to about 2 drops per sec.

- Give it another couple hours, then remove animal by hand and transfer ot main tank, after shutting down circulation and lights (except maybe actinics or something low-level)

- Next few days give it a full (but shortened drastically) photoperiod

 

[reefNewbie]

what im not sure about is the water temperature. seems to me that all of this sitting arourd with the bag, even during dripping would cause the bag water temperature to drop sufficiently low. how do you combat this?

 

[Anonymous]

what im not sure about is the water temperature. seems to me that all of this sitting arourd with the bag, even during dripping would cause the bag water temperature to drop sufficiently low. how do you combat this?

What I do sometimes is I have a one gallon (had ice cream in it!) secured in my sump and drip water from the top tank down into the bucket. Since the bucket is sitting in the sump water, the temp slowly adjusts to the tank water, and stays stable.

I must admit I usually only do this for inverts.

 

[squeezix]

Some of this confusion may be due to trans-shipping. many anemones are shipped damn near dry. Looking back on it, seeing this small volume of water, and the spent mucous, nematocysts in the bag, I may have been hasty to add water. But it didn't seem like a large amount.

Thank you for taking part in this discussion. I ask questions because I read and read, but I know something went wrong with what I'm doing. I do not care to argue how many books I've read or how much Live Rock I truly have. (if you really read, you would have seen a sump and refugium, it's a natural tank) I am honest with my tank specs and knowledge because when I run into problems I can't answer I come here. Some LFS guys know a lot, but there is more knowledge here.

Either way the Anemone is toast. The leather is happy to have him gone.

Does anyone have any good math on salinity fluctuation? Say 55 gallons needs a 2 gallon top-off every day. Could that have been a problem? Temp 78 at night, 82 when lights on.