Open brain coral killed my anemone?

[BuggeredBeaver]

<Insert string of expletives here>

I just came home to find that wandering anemone attached to the side of my brain coral. A good portion of its tenticles have been burned/poisoned/whatevered off. I've separated the two, but I suspect that the anemone has had it.

Any hope for it, or should I yank it before it gives off a nice batch of ammonia for the rest of my tanks inhabitants to suffer through? More than half of its tenticles are now wispy stumps. Is there anything that I can do to try to aid it, or is it time to start planning the wake?

Any help would be most appreciated.

Cheers,
Chris

[BuggeredBeaver]

Well, it's still moving, but doesn't really seem well at all. Strands are looking pretty thin. Base/underside of it looks a bit better, but overall, it looks to have taken a serious beating.

Found this in usenet in a thread with someone else that had a similarly beaten anemone:




Don't give up immediately just because the anemone doesn't look well. Mine
has recovered from being sucked into a power head, burnt by the heater, and
having the whole tank reach 86 degrees. The anemones I've seen die will
generally shrink over a period of at least a week, until one day instead of
opening up it turns into a mass of decaying jelly that must be vacuumed out
of the tank. If I removed the first anemone I thought was dead, I'd have
lost my favorite anemone several times. </pre> I guess even if it does die off, I should have at least a bit of time before it would affect the ammonia levels anyway.

Keep your fingers crossed for me/it.

Chris

[nynick]

Good luck and thanks for the heads up on Open Brains....I had no idea they were so nasty.

[ssheipel]

Check your open brain at night -- they become a pure mass of sweeper/feeder tentacles.

Sheesh, what a coral vs coral vs anenome vs fish vs plankton life the reef is!

Hope your anenome pulls through.

steve

[nynick]

Isn't it horrible! I always laugh when I think about "Finding Nemo" where everything is so sweet and cuddly. In real life Dory would attack Nemo, the squid would eat them all just before being eaten by the Ray. All of that is if they made it through a chemical warfare that makes the Union Carbide plant in India look like a picnic...hehehe. Nice topic for a childrens movie, makes "Nightmare on Elmstreet" look like Bambi in comparasion. Wait a moment...doesn't everyone get shot in Bambi?? Whats wrong with these people making childrens movies?

P.S. Do I win the lenghty threadcrapping contest? Sorry Beaver.

[BuggeredBeaver]

Thanks for the replies and wishes of good luck guys.

It truly is a fierce world within the reef. Who'd have thought that the open brain would wreak such havoc on the poor wandering anemone. From what I've read, softies/LPS corals are/can be the most toxic so I guess this shouldn't have been as much as shock as it was. If the anomone does recover, let's hope this is a lesson well learned.


Speaking of which, the anonome has taken refuge in a cave of sorts in my live rock placement. Its tenticles are still moving and it isn't just flow within the tank, so it hasn't packed it in just yet. I'm a little concerned about it not getting enough light, but I'm hoping this is a temporary measure to allow it to recover.

The funny thing of course is that my percs didn't pay it much attention until the incident. The attention they've now given it was trying to munch down on the stumps of the damaged tenticles. Nice eh? I suspect that is the reason for the hiding in the rocks. Nobody likes being eaten alive I guess.

I can certainly understand it wanting to hang out with the OBC though. That is one cool coral. sscheipel, it does indeed become a mass of tenticles/polyps at night/fish feeding time. Pretty cool to watch, but apparently not so cool to touch. Perhaps this will get the anemone to pick a spot (other than its current location) and stay there.

Time will tell whether or not it pull through, but at least it hasn't given up yet. From what I've read the anomones can be tough, so I'm hoping that holds true with this one.

I'll let you know how it goes. I'll try to snap some pics so you can see the poor bugger. It's pretty recessed in to the cave at this point. I don't want to disturb it, so it might be pretty tough to get a good shot.

Cheers,
Chris