Condylactis Anemone, Help.

[278923]

So i know this is a dumb question because as with every other forum i know i will recieve nothing but a useless lecture that answers about 0 percent of my question but anyways. Last night i was about to turn my 14G biocube lights off when i noticed one of my condys was spewing what looked like brown algae out of it's mouth. It was completely deflated, it's mouth was reasonably exposed seemed to have some kind of yellow substance around it and the brown stuff seemed stringy it was actually just hanging our of the anemone's mouth reaching to the top of the water. So after reading many different forums on people claiming this happened and seeing 6 different possible causes i decided to remove the condy temporarily to make sure there was no possibility of it dying and polluting my tank. When i woke today it was perfectly fine, reinflated. So i went about reinserting it into my tank and it is still perfectly fine moving about the tank as normally but i was wondering cause of this so i don't have to freak out next time. I heard this could just be waste but all of the waste i've seen from them is much thicker than the string i saw.


My tank is reasonably new, like 1-2 months (I KNOW, NO ANEMONES FOR ATLEAST A YEAR.)
-14G biocube
-Around 10-15 lbs of live rock
-Live sand
-2 Condy anemones
-1 Feather duster
-2 Damsels
-1 Cleaner Shrimp

I checked the water stats the night of and everything was fine. My tank had just finishing cycling so NO2 NO3 and NH3/4 were all down to 0 or very close. Ph was fine. I checked again today and the only thing i noticed had changed was the NH3/4 has risen to about .25 PPM

And i'm sorry, new to using this forums and stupid me, i diddn't tank any pictures of this, i was to worried about rushing to get it out to think about taking pictures.

[fish daddy]

Are these anemones host to the light converting algae or bacteria? I did just read something, I thought about giant clams, that say they do sometimes expell excess amounts of their symbiotic organisms. Brown and stringy looking. That was normal, and not a sign of death or destruction.

Have you heard the same?

[278923]

I have not but that seems like it could be possible. Thanks for the input i'll look into it and get back to you if i find something.

[278923]

They do have photosynthetic algae(Zooxanthellae) it looks like. Hmmmm sounds like that's what it was, thanks. I'm guessing just water change it out?

[soymilk]

im not going to go into a lecture about keeping anemones in such a small and unmature tank...

When anemones poop, they will do so from their mouth. So many times you will see it spew brown stringy stuff from its mouth after a day or 2 of eating something. Anemones will increase the ammonia in a fresh tank like that. Technically I wouldn't have put one in there yet, but if I had to I would have just done one at a time. Keep an eye on NH3, because anemones are very sensitive to increase in ammonia.

If its spewing out its Zooxanthellae, then its going to die. If its doing zooxanthellae... it will look like small clearish swiggly playdoughish things coming outta everywhere on the anemone, not to mention the mouth will be enlarged and the anemone would generally look like crap.

[fishboyt]

Like soymilk said, it's just going to the bathroom. :)

[dustin]

+1
Just expelling waist. Unless its mouth stays open and the anemone looks like crap for more then 24 hours you are ok. if it shrivles up and keeps its mouth open for more than 24 -48 hrs get it out of your tank before it dies.

[278923]

Okay, the wierd part is.... it refuses to take food from me..... it's been almost a month now and it still has take NO food. I feed the fish flakes and occasionally frozen brine shrimp with a peice of algae every so often... so unless it's eating one of those things i don't know what it'd be eating. The other anemone eats the dried shrimp i have but this one just refuses to take the shrimp... he'll grab ahold of it then just let it drift off.

[soymilk]

try a smaller piece or better yet try a small piece from fresh shrimp. It should take that...