Good luck!

SUSPENSE IS KILLING ME!!!!!!!!!




everything okay over there?

oh yeah...couple weeks is okay. LMK when to send you some moneys

Okay, the tank is still really murky, even though I did another water change this morning. Depite that, the strawberries still look fine, and so do the anthopleuras in the bottom tank. The Urticina, on the otherhand, stil looked awful, so I mixed up some totally clean saltwater in a bucket, plopped the urt in there and put an aerator in there. It's in my basement, which is 63 degrees, which should be cool enough. The nem already looks a ton better, it's insides are actually on it's inside for once! So, he should be fine at least until this afternoon, when I get some (a lot) of carbon at the fish store (I couldn't find any at the store) because the tank really needs it.

63!! can you get it any cooler (fans on surfaces)? that's pretty warm, especially if it's stressed. will you be able to get it out to me before the weekend, you're making me nervous!

Jamie...I would definitly wait a couple weeks before you send those nems out. Give them time to recover from their journey. The water temp they were living in was about 59 degrees, so you might want to bring it down a hair.
Good circulation is a must, so maybe another power head will help. Yes, feeding is a key issue, they are used to getting lot's of food. I have been feeding them a small mix of coral food and myisis once a day.
As far as the battles these guys are known to have with one another....I can't say for sure, but in the wild they are literally on top of each other. I have seen all varieties living hand in hand. As mentioned they may be fighting without our knowledge, but it sure doesn't appear that way.

KWG...No, the Baldi died about 1 week after I put him in the tank. I just think the temperature changes were to drastic for him. I imagine he came form somewhere in Baja. So his normal temp was around 72 degrees. Then he went to the fish store for a week at around 80, then into my tank at 62. If only he we're legal to grab locally.

As far as the new additions, when I got home last night, one of the white anemone's had moved off the rock he came from onto a rock in the tank. I got a great picture of it
Click to view attachment

This is what one of the colonies looked like last night
Click to view attachment

Here is what the whole tank looks like
Click to view attachment

Next time I go out I'm gonna grab some red, blue and yellow berries!! I'll get some extra for you guys

Man, too bad about the damsel. I'm considering picking one up at Blue Zoo Aquatics while they're still available (and "cheap"). In case you want to check them out...
http://www.bluezooaquatics.com/productDeta...=781&cid=15
You mean there are blue Corynactis out there?!! Nice...

I just got off the phone with the guy at Blue Zoo....Sorry to say he is out of stock on them. It turns out they are located not to far from my office here in LA, so I called him to check the origination of the fish. He tells me they come from a collector down in Nicaragua. I was quite surprised to hear they venture that far south. They wouldn't be very good canidates for my tank. That price seems to be the going rate in todays market....if you can even find them...he says he sells out of them as fast as he get's them. My LFS says they don't come around very often.

Yes blue!!!! Check them out....not a very good picture, but you can see the color. I will try to get a bettter pic later.
Click to view attachment

Okay, I got some carbon today, and just got it in the tank. The water's still cloudy, hopefully the carbon will help. I'm considering just setting up a new tank for the berries, new water, etc. separate from this one until I can get everything sorted out.

Mike, the water the urticina is in is 63, but the actual tank is 58, so no worries there. Well, for the strawberries at least, I need to cool off the Urticina a little.

ZOMG URTICINA LOFOTENSIS!!!!!!!!!!!



EDIT: umm, j/k about that. I horribly mis-id'd it. One paineted nem and one stubby rose. Very, very nice anemones. THANK YOU KWG!

mmmmmmm.....update?

okay, today I went to the fish store and got 5 gallons of natural saltwater. I'm setting up two totally new tanks, one with the berries and one with the urticinas, metridium, and anthopleuras. I'm gonna clean all the rocks of really well, then put them in the fresh tanks with brand new water. This hopefully, will not lead to more die off, and once everything settles down again I'll be able to set the surge tank back up.

Sorry for the incompleteness of the last few replies, I've been trying my hardest to keep everything alive, and hence haven't had much time for the computer.

Everything is in a new tank, and is already looking better. Interestingly, some things did fine, while others did not. The shrimp, porcelain crab, and one baby crab survived, and seem perfectly fine, the other two baby crabs are dead. The big Urticina (which I sent to KWG) was looking awful, yet the baby urts and metridium he sent me are fine, even though they were in the tank for 24 hours. All the fish died. All the anthopleura anemones are fine, and the orange striped anemones, though they were closed in the big tank, have opened back up and look great. The urchins looked upset, but are doing better now.

My guess as to what happened is that the berries brought in a lot of dying organic matter, both off the shells they wee on and from the squished anemones. This has decayed, but slowly, so there is not much ammonia yet, but it is still taking up oxygen. Because the surge was not running, the water was not aerated enough to keep up with the dropping oxygen levels. I guess the oxygen got low enough to kill the fish, but not the invertebrates. Trace amounts of ammonia must have irritated the big Urticina and killed the two baby crabs. I haven't tested the tank throughout this whole ordeal, so I don't know what the actual ammonia levels were, at least early on, but I'm going to test now, so we'll see what those reveal.

Also, got a couple cool hitch hikers. A pretty red calcaraeous tube worm (no ID yet, haven't had time :/ ), and a cool scaleworm (again, no further ID).

Okay, so, the same exact thing happened to this tank. Got murky, smells bad, etc. There's no way I can deal with this tonight, it's just gonna have to wait till tomorrow; I just got home, and I have no idea what to do. Does anyone have any ideas as to how to fix this situation? It's seems that large water changes and filtration are not helping at all, and I can't think of anything else to do.

Definitely check for dead scallops (or clams or whatever they are), the big one I have is certainly dead, and I'm about to engage in the most unpleasant task of breaking it apart and brushing away the putrifying flesh. I regret that in so doing I will have to disturb the strawberries, which are still clearly stressed. I don't have a full mortality report as of yet, but their condition is still poor. On a more positive note, the painted urt is looking great and recovering nicely. It looks like it'll be really to feed tomorrow.
Doesn't sound like there is a lot you can do right now. I'd suggest using all of the water pumps and air pumps that you have at your disposal. Increased circulation won't do much to mitigate the underlying problem (whatever it is) but will lessen its impact on the animals. Good luck...

Eck, yeah, a few scallops had died on the way here, and I had to clean them out, but they weren't rotting yet. :bleh:

Well, I'm glad the Urticina is doing well, I was really worried about it. I hope the strawberries recover, too. Right now I'm working on setting up another tank, so I can separate the strawberries from all the healthy stuff, so I don't end up killing everything I already had as well. I might try peeling the berries of the scallop shells and just throwing the shells away, because I'm pretty sure that they're the problem. I'll update again once I've got everything split up into two tanks.

Okay, everything is separated into two tanks. One tank for the strawberries, and one tank for everything else. The "everything else tank" has, all my anthopleura and oranged striped anemones, black turban snails, two little urticinas and one metridium. Anything not mentioned above (not including strawberries) died - fish, crabs urchins, etc. Because that tank is now separate from the strawberries, I'm not anticipating any further problems or losses with those animals. As far as strawberries go, the pink ones have done the best, most of them are still alive, but I got rid of a few squished ones. Nearly all the oyster things on all the rocks were dead, only two still actively respond to being touched. I pryed open and cleaned all the flesh out of the dead ones, I'm guessing they were the main things polluting the tank. I'm really hoping those ones make it, because scraping rotting flesh out of dead oysters is not too enjoyable. The pretty red tube worm is still alive, fortunately. The scaleworm is MIA, if it hitched into the new tank on one of the shells, then it's still alive, otherwise it got tossed out with the gross water and dead scallops and anemones. The orange anemones were the hardest hit. So many of them one the rock were dead (a lot were already dead when they got here - they got smooshed during shipping) that I just peel off the survivors and threw the shell away - I think there are six or seven ployps left, but fortunately, they all look healthy. The light pink/white berries are fine, a few losses, but most of them still look okay. That's the progress report for now, I'll keep updating you guys as to how things are going. I guess if this keeps happening I'll just keep doing 100% water changes until it stops, unless anyone has a better idea. I might go to the store and get a big hob filter and lots of carbon, and try to deal with things that way, because I know the big water changes are stressful for the anemones. I did a ( I think) really good job cleaning off the rocks this time though. Anything that looked like it might be dead got scraped off. All the shells got scrubbed with a toothbrush, too, so any residual slime, etc should be taken care of. I REALLY hope that took care of it, I don't want to have to do this many more times. Still, I think things are looking up, I'll keep you guys updated.

Sounds like you're doing everything you can. Not knowing how rank the water is getting, or how fast, I'd still recommend the water changes over the carbon until things start settling down a bit.

sorry you have to be the one going through the messy part

It's okay, I'm dealing with it. I think it just would have been messier had it been shipped to you, smaller tank and a much longer shipping distance. And Jeremai doesn't even have a tank yet , so that wouldn't have worked. All I know is I won't be trying this again any time in the near future, and when I do, I'm DEFINITELY setting up a quarantine tank.

Got my fingers crossed that things settle down soon.

I didn't say I would rather it be me

but yeah, best that you got it first and had to deal with it.

Keep us updated...and I for one will keep worrying

Well, for now everything seems all right. The new tank the strawberries are in seems to be doing reasonably well. The water hasn't gotten any cloudier since I put them in, and they've all opened up. One thing I've noticed about them, and I think this must be a characteristic of corallimorphs (I don't know much about them, so correct me if I'm wrong), is that they don't seem to be able to move like anemones do. If you think about it, being colonial the way they are, attached at the base, it wouldn't make sense to be able to move. I also don't know about reattaching. When I peeled some of the orange ones off, a thin brown layer came up under their pedal disks. I don't know if this is part of the anemone or part of the scallop shell, but it doesn't look like they'll be able to reattach with that on their feet. For now I'm just gonna leave them and see what they decide to do about it, but if it goes a week or two without them attaching, or showing any inclination to, should I even consider trying to glue them down? Not gonna worry about that right now, but for future reference.

Well...brown stuff could be nems or could be shell - brown and gooey is probably part of the nem (at least in my experience with the mini carpets...but minis are fine even if you rip them up a bit...don't know about strawberries). If it's not gooey, it's probably the organic coating on the shells getting ripped off. I think the latter is more likely, and if that's the case you probably won't see them attempt to reattach, since they're still sort of attached.

Beyond that...I dunno what to tell ya about reattaching them....new territory for all of us I suppose

Keep up the good work!!

Yeah, it's stiff and brittle. I was thinking maybe built up layers of algae on the shells or something. I'll just wait and see what they do - better to have them unattached anyway for shipping.

Yay! The tank is still clear! I'm gonna test the water today, and do a 1 gal waterchange, and probably keep doing 1 gal waterchanges for the next few days. I also *might* move the Urticina's into the tank with the strawberries. The tank they are in is running 63 degrees, which is fine for everything else, but a little warm for them. I'm hoping this won't trigger allelopathy from either them or the strawberries, because I think that was one of the factors that led to the tank crash earlier. I'm also running carbon now, which would help with that. I can keep the current urticina tank down to 60 by adding ice every hour or so, so for now I've been doing that, but I won't be able to keep that up during the week with school.

I fed everything last night, too. I couldn't really tell if the strawberries were eating - some of them closed up, slowly, but it wasn't and anemone-like reaction, but then again, they aren't anemones, I don't know how quickly they would normally react to food.

YAY!!!!!! GOOD NEWS TODAY!!!!!!!

!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!

And even batter news today! The berries look the best they have looked yet, all opened up and happy. They also look HUNGRY, so I'm gonna feed em in few minutes. I've got all the other stuff in the bottom part of the surge tank, and it's all looking great too. I think I'll be able to get the surge tank up and surging this afternoon!

YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The last two pages have been a rollercoaster ride of emotions.

First I was all

Then I was all

After that I was all

And now I'm all

That makes two of us.

I think I had a heartattack in the midst of all that

You guys need to chill... I had full confidence in ya, Jamie.

Glad you two made it through okay.

Thanks Lalani. You setting up that tank yet?

The surge tank is officially up again, but not surging, because the anemones are still attaching. The strawberries are still looking hungry (didn't feed them earlier) so I'll see how they feel about a little cyclopeez after I do some of my homework.

lol...and Lani sticks up for ya



not a lack of confidence in Jamie...lack of confidence in strawberry hardiness in midst of massive die off

I just hope the same thing doesn't happen when I ship to you! But it shouldn't, there's not much left on the rocks that could die.

I'm still thinking about setting up a cw tank, but I'm pretty sure I can convince myself to do it.

well, i have plenty of extra tanks and tubing to jimmy a second cw tank...and tons of free water, so i'm prepared. and i know what to do now that you've done it

heh, yeah, at least I've got experience now. I'm procrastinating on my homework tonight, so I might even get pictures! I'm not gonna stay up late, though, so we'll see. Television may be a piority, with all this going on plus a big english project, I haven't seen an TV in at least a week! I'll get pictures soon, if I don't get 'em tonight, though, so don't worry.

nuttin on tv...football game isn't any good...take pics instead

TIVO!! All I watched was a half hour of family guy, but the lights were off when I went upstairs. Who knows, maybe I'll get some night-time shots, we'll see.

PICS!!!!

Bottom tank:


A. elegantissima




Urticina coriacea



Top tank:


Urticina grebelnyi??? KWG identified it as a Christmas anemone, aka U. grebelnyi. doesn't look at all like the one in my book (solid red column is the main difference). Could it be U. columbiana? It fits the description much better. Input? (and don't worry, it's not being smooshed by that rock, just getting held in place till it attaches)


C. californica!! (and tubeworm)








-Jamie

OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

+1

Nice, triangle formation. I like it.

Let me try this

___ ___

_ _______
___

Well, that almost worked. It's a big smily face, if you can't tell.

other way around, the one with the red base is the U. coriacea
I'm going "by the book" on the U. crassicornis, although you are right in questioning whether or not it should be called... that "greby" name, whatever it is
they look great, glad you like them

Okay, thanks for clearing that up. According to this website (which is a good resource, according to Jeremai) U. crassicornis = U. grebelnyi

http://actiniaria.com/urticina_grebelnyi.php