Eight
Guest
So after years of successful BTA keeping I had a strange and sudden crash which wiped out many of my prized BTAs. I lost flame tips, green tips, the lemondrop... gah. I was so upset I actually stopped reading the forums for awhile.
At first I thought that maybe it had to do with the anemone propagation I was doing, but the BTA decline wasn't limited to anemones that I had cut, it took down anemones that were untouched and had been happy in my tank for months. I even moved some of the sick anemones back into another tank with other anemones and those anemones (previously healthy and uncut) began to take a dive as well!!
I ran aggressive water changes, ozone, carbon, etc... nothing stopped the decline. The anemones would start to spit out messentrial filaments, crumple their tentacles, wander around the tank and then lose anchor and inflate and deflate. Some started to melt, so I pulled those. The others I tried to quarantine.
At this point, I have one of the Dolphin Pet Village green tips that is doing psuedo ok and a white speckled BTA that inflates and deflates a lot but I think will pull through. I also have two Colorado Sunbursts which seem to be 100% fine. Of course, all of the cheapo roses are doing great. I noticed that the ones that have been surviving are those anemones which have been captive bred for a long time. The colorado sunbursts and roses...
I think my mistake was adding too many new wild caught anemone morphs. I suspect that maybe one of the anemones came in with a bacterial or viral infection and it spread. I don't think it's allelopathy, because it affects anemones that were previously perfectly fine together for many months.
Anyways... after being really discouraged about this for awhile, figured I'd come out an vent it off my chest.
Thankfully, I have managed to drown my BTA sorrows in mini carpets.
At first I thought that maybe it had to do with the anemone propagation I was doing, but the BTA decline wasn't limited to anemones that I had cut, it took down anemones that were untouched and had been happy in my tank for months. I even moved some of the sick anemones back into another tank with other anemones and those anemones (previously healthy and uncut) began to take a dive as well!!
I ran aggressive water changes, ozone, carbon, etc... nothing stopped the decline. The anemones would start to spit out messentrial filaments, crumple their tentacles, wander around the tank and then lose anchor and inflate and deflate. Some started to melt, so I pulled those. The others I tried to quarantine.
At this point, I have one of the Dolphin Pet Village green tips that is doing psuedo ok and a white speckled BTA that inflates and deflates a lot but I think will pull through. I also have two Colorado Sunbursts which seem to be 100% fine. Of course, all of the cheapo roses are doing great. I noticed that the ones that have been surviving are those anemones which have been captive bred for a long time. The colorado sunbursts and roses...
I think my mistake was adding too many new wild caught anemone morphs. I suspect that maybe one of the anemones came in with a bacterial or viral infection and it spread. I don't think it's allelopathy, because it affects anemones that were previously perfectly fine together for many months.
Anyways... after being really discouraged about this for awhile, figured I'd come out an vent it off my chest.
Thankfully, I have managed to drown my BTA sorrows in mini carpets.
