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Complete newbie requesting help with first octopus setup!

Yes after this I think I will definitely spend the extra money on the strips.

New YouTube videos:

Clownfish + Anemone:
Clownfish in tank:

Much more relevantly, last Vlog:


It is 11 days old though from before I put the tank together so I need to make a new one. According to the commenter, I'm butchering my animals and people like me make him mad. I sure hope I don't butcher them :/ I exaggerated the truth in my reply, feel free to chime in over there tho :P
 
Katy, You might mention the cracked tank and that this is a replacement tank for an established aquarium. If it was day 29 of a new tank he would have a very valid (if poorly expressed) point.
 
Good point, which I actually didn't think of... if someone replies I will point that out. It was not until after I got home that I read the tank was supposed to be cycled for 6 months before you add an anemone and I didn't think about the fact that the stuff that went in there is from a previous cycled aquarium.

I tried reading the charts against daylight, it is just as difficult as before but I did walk back and forwards in my living room and noticed how the colour of the liquid changes dramatically as I get closer to the tank - lesson learned. If I had to 'guess' I would say ammonia is 0.05 and nitrite is also 0.05, but I really don't know :/

The activity in the tank seems to be improving: George finally realised it is safe to come to the top of the tank for food after 3 days, and he is now exploring the whole tank instead of sticking by the anemone the whole time. I saw the anemone excreting fecal matter (brown stringy stuff) for the first time today so he is eating something which is good. My main concern now is that it shrivels up maybe twice a day and stays shrivelled up for some hours at a time - when it expands again it always seems larger than ever (optical illusion I'm sure). I read this is common when you first put it in a tank but can also be a sign it is unhappy with the environment. I don't really know what to do right now other than wait and see if it stabilizes. It is a healthy colour and has now settled in one spot between two rocks where it seems firmly attached, but it is very droopy when deflated.
 
Since your parameters are not stable I would suggest you feed the fish very sparingly. I would feed every other day or every 3 days until you get the fish out of the bucket and into the tank cycled and stable. Uneaten food and waste from the fish is only adding to your problem. I have found that when my anemones are stressed, (yours most definately is)it is not uncommon for them to bleach and or refuse food. As mentioned above, they require a stable, mature tank. I would not try feeding it until you get the ammonia, nitrite and nitrate down to zero. This obviously won't be until you get them into your new tank. When you do begin offering food, try very tiny peices. I would use a turkey baster and squirt a few mysis directly into the anemone. If not grabbed by the anemone the clown will consume it. I looked at the photos you posted on facebook and your anemone looks very healthy but...the combination of everything you have going on, it will be an uphill battle for this little one.

When I was replacing my 37 with a 50, all my bubbletips and many fish (along with all my live rock) lived in a 40 gallon bucket for 3 months while the new tank cycled. I had a couple circulation pumps, heater, 2 T5 units for lighting and a protien skimmer. I cannot remember what lighting you have over the bucket. Good lighting right now is very important, they are photosynthetic.

Just a note, My bubble tip anemones with very strong feeding responses do not feel sticky to the touch. As you described, when touched, it feels like almost nothing. Bubble tips are very unlike my mini carpets which will stick to a finger like velcro. Be careful though, on the palm side it cannot sting you, skin is too thick. Anywhere else it can give you a good sting, can be painful and if you have allergies to bee stings it can cause a similar reaction.
I will be following along.
 
Hi Lmecher,

Thanks for coming into the thread, any and all constructive advice is being listened to hard at this point. I don't regret buying the anemone but I am still feeling a bit bad about it so I will be damned if I let it die.

You are a little out of date, maybe read back the last 2 or 3 pages, but everything is in the tank now. The anemone stayed on his own in a tub with just rock, circulation and lights for a week or two. I am stressing a lot because despite spending what feels like several days in a row now just reading about anemones I still don't understand if its behaviour is normal or not. I have been thinking that the clown is 'loving it to death' but thankfully today he has left the anemone alone for a while and gone off exploring the tank. The clown seems to be very settled and happy, and ate properly today for the first time since I put him in the tank, but the anemone has refused little pieces of shrimp (on a stick) since I got it, it just doesn't make any attempt to grab the food at all.

I haven't tried to feed it since it went in the tank some days ago but it must have eaten something since it was defecating today.

I am so glad you told me about the tentacles because I was worried they are not sticky at all. The foot is very sticky. Thank you, that eased my nerves on that aspect.

The situation now and yesterday is that the anemone is attached sideways on a rock, but not its entire foot, there is a bit of its foot hanging loose in the water; some of the tentacles are inflated and some arent, especially the ones round the edges are not inflated. There is a huge disc in the middle showing with no tentacles, it looks like a piece of rubber or leather; sometimes its mouth is shut tight and sometimes it is open by maybe 0.5-0.75cm, then it has white around its mouth.

If you could tell me if this is normal and unhealthy and/or what to do if anything, that would be good. I can take some pictures if you like. I've spent ages reading on wetwebmedia trying to find answers but the FAQs are massively disorganised.

The lighting is also concerning me. I have 2x40W over the tank right now, one white one blue actinic, I knew before I got the anemone that isn't enough but D told me she has two BTAs with the same lights (I think it was D - it's somewhere in this thread), so, I just went for it. I have another light fixture with a 150W HQI in it but no way to attach it to the new tank.

Awaiting advice...
 
It is very easy to overfeed an anemone becasue they seem like such a big animal. Remember that they are mostly a baloon filled with water, and try to feed them based on their size when completely deflated. On top of that, remember that they are cold blooded, use very little energy, and probably make some (if not all) of their food from light, so be very stingy with food for the anemone. If you notice that the anemone is shrinking over time, then feed it more often, otherwise, either decrease food, or stay the same.

I would try to avoid feeding a chunk of shrimp to your anemone, unless the chunk is very small (like 5 grams or 1/2 cc), and then only once ever 4 to 7 days. The risk in giving the anemone chunks of meat is that it can easily swallow more than it can digest, and will spit the undigested part out into the water when it starts to go bad/rot. What I used to do was to soak a pinch of flake food in a glass of water for a couple of minutes, until it sank to the bottom of the glass, and then suck it up with a plastic turkey baster, and blow it into the anemone. The clown fish will eat what slips past the anemone, so no food will be wasted and it's much harder to over feed. Again only do that every few days (4 to 7??). You might need to attach a length of plastic air hose or tubing to the end of the turkey baster to be able to reach the anemone without needing to put your soapy, oily, lotion covered hand in the water.
 
Ammonia is poisonous so I think we should keep our fingers crossed for this one. I would say it looks alright considering. I have seen this scenario played out over and over on another forum, usually dosen't end well.
Maroons are very hard on their anemones, they have been known to love them to death. Mine killed a couple and I also had a ocellaris that bit some tips off. I will hope for the best, you never know... They can fool us, look great one day then horrible the next. There is really nothing you can do besides geting the ammonia down to zero, you are at the mercy of your cycle. You have been doing your homework reading up and such so you may know what to watch for. Detatching, disintegration or melting gaping mouth with white stringy material (intestines) protruding. If you are in doubt, the smell test never fails, if it is dead or dying it will have a nasty odor. Hopefully you won't see these but keep an eye on it. It sometimes happens all of a sudden and will cause an ammonia spike and you could loose everything in the tank. I don't mean to alarm you but you should be prepared just in case.
Have you ever visited http://www.karensroseanemones.net/apps/videos/ she has a lot of good information with photos that could be very helpful.
I am enjoying your thread, don't get off the octopus subject often. Anemones are my first love, the reason I got into saltwater.

Joe ceph, that is the reason my hands are not dewy soft and smoothe. More like dry and salty!
 
I have been watching the maroon closely. He spends much of his time brushing the tentacles with his fins but I have never seen him biting at it or anything like that. He never leaves the anemone for long. I can remove him temporarily if you think it's a good idea? He can just go back to the bucket.

Yep I've read the warning signs but I'm so unused to this kind of animal it is unnerving just to see it deflated.

No bad smells at this time.

I haven't seen that link, I'll check it out now (just woke up).

Regarding the ammonia; earlier in the thread (near the start) I expressed a problem which is also highlighted somewhere in the Facebook pics: when I make the RO water, the ammonia is zero. When I add the salt and test the ammonia again, it is never zero, it is always 0.1 or something like that.

I have now tried two different brands of salt and two different test kits, the results are always the same. What on Earth am I doing wrong? (I've shown the exact steps I do when mixing the saltwater on the Facebook pics). This is really bothering me. I have two buckets mixed up to do a 10% water change today but I see little point if the ammonia in the new salt water is higher than in the tank.
 
I read where you posted that. Very strange, never ran into this particular problem before. Did you purchase the ammonia test or did you get it from a private party? Could it be out dated or tainted in some way? Just a thought since you get the same reading with 2 different salt mixes.
 
I've used two test kits - one TetraTest and one JBL (which I'm using at the moment) - I purchased them both new, I had problems reading the colours on the TetraTest one so I thought I'd try the JBL when I went in to buy a replacement kit.

Both buckets of salt were also purchased new.

I smoke cigarettes and washed my hands thoroughly (without soap) before making the water. This time I mixed it with a wooden spoon instead of my hand or a pump. Same results. I just checked the new saltwater now: 0.15ppm ammonia. The level in the tank is 0.05ppm.

I don't see how I can ever get a stable environment if I can't produce ammonia-free saltwater :frown:

...

Aside from that, here are all the problems I see that are facing the anemone right now (please tell me if this is incorrect):

- The temperature in the water is ridiculously high, approaching 30C. I don't have a clip-on fan so I have taken a table fan now and stuffed it over the sump, turned it on to max and unplugged the heater (which was set to 22C).

- The salinity in the water is too low, around 1.020 (it's because I removed some of the saltwater to clean the sand and for othe tasks and replaced it with RO water, my bad). I want it to be 1.025; to rectify this, should I mix up saltwater at 1.025 and keep doing changes, or should I mix up at a higher salinity to make it balance out?

- The calcium level is 300ppm and the dKH is 10.6. I have a calcium supplement but I've never used it before so am a bit nervous - should I add some to the water according to the directions to try to get it up to 410 over the course of some days?

- The lights are probably insufficient (I was wrong in my earlier post, it was CaptFish who said he had the same lights as me, not D). With 2x40W one blue one white, that is less than 1W per gallon. I looked at the metal halide lights online last night and there is simply no way I can afford that, they are going for $750 for 250W and even that is only 2.5W per gallon. Besides, the eventual purpose of the tank is to house an octopus and that would be far too much light. Suggestions?
 
- The temperature in the water is ridiculously high, approaching 30C
That is the same temp I had my tank set at when I was trying to emulate the environment where I caught Leggs. Right now the water temperature is 29.9C

The lights are probably insufficient (I was wrong in my earlier post, it was CaptFish who said he had the same lights as me, not D). With 2x40W one blue one white, that is less than 1W per gallon.
Yup I have been running them for almost five years now. You said you wanted an octopus tank right? The you dont want too much light. Remember I have the same anemone under the same lights and its doing great, i even have some soft corals. I have .76 watts per gallon. Although you cant measure it like that. 1 watt of florescent light is not equal to 1 watt of metal halide. Lumens is what your looking for, sometimes measured in candlepower. Metal halide lights are for corals. also you go with metal halide lights you will surely need to get a chiller as they will heat up your tank a lot.


should I mix up saltwater at 1.025 and keep doing changes, or should I mix up at a higher salinity to make it balance out
Mix it stronger then add it to the next to balance the water that is in there. try mixing the new water at 1.032 or a little stronger

If you feel comfortable messing with the calcium then I would go ahead and give it a try. just follow the directions exactly and should be fine. I was nervous the first time I did too, now it's second nature.

I'm stumped on your ammona problem.
 

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