My long tentacle anemone that was host to my black saddleback clown died. The shrunk down in size dramatically, and they started spewing crap from his mouth. Tentacle where all limp and there was no movement. I think it is from my nitrate levels being to high. They seem to stay right around the 20 range, but all my other levels are o.k. Hopefully the mangrove sump I started will cure this problem. I have seven red mangroves in my temp. refugium so far. I took my old Marinland Penguin 200 power filter, and stuck the mangroves in that for now. Hopefully when I get my Tom Rapids Pro PS4 filter the chemical levels will balance out, and the nitrates will drop.

Anemones can be and usually are fickle. I tried keeping a GBTA long ago in my 7 month old system and thought it was mature enough. I made the mistake of wanting a "host" for my clowns. What a big mistake!

I still didn't have my water parameters under control. The problem was I thought I could control it. At that stage of a tanks immaturity, you can't control it.

I thought I could do my daily dosing of 2 part and everything would be fine. So wrong! I began dripping kalkwasser and stopped 2 part dosing and just let the tank mature. The daily swings evened out and flattened out.

I was blasting the tank with heavy linear water flow. The SPS didn't like it and responded with multiple RTN(rappid tissue necrosis) events. I toned down the water flow and the SPS responded positively.

Clowns don't need an anemone in a tank. We like to see a clown/anemone partnership for our own selfish reasons. My GS Maroon clowns have hosted a large colony of pink paly's just like they were a nem. I would never ever put an anemone in my tank again. When the GBTA died and puked it's guts, I am glad I did'nt have many SPS coral at the time.


Note to all:......................

Don't try to keep an anemone in any tank other than a very mature tank. Mature tank means about 1-2 years minimum and one that requires no human intervention for many days. It is much harder to keep an anemone happy and thriving than it is to keep SPS coral. SPS coral are easy compared to anemones.