Dead Rock Flower Anemone?

[Zakary2003]

What happened to this guy? Is he dead? It looked healthy two days ago, until I added some sexy shrimp which irritated it. I moved it to the back of the tank away from the shrimp and now it looks like this!

Should I remove it from the tank? Is there anything I should do to help it? None of the clean up crew has messed with it that I've seen and all this damaged appeared after I moved it away from the sexy shrimp. All my powerheads have anemone guards.

Two other rock flowers and 3 bubble tips are doing just fine, along with a few corals such as 3 different chalices, two duncans, a candycane, an anacropora, a monti cap, two favites, and an acan, plus some softies like leathers, zoas, gsp, xenia, palythoa, clove polyps, etc. All parameters are within the normal range, except for phosphates which are high at 0.30 ppm but have been as high as .51 without this anemone showing issues.

 

[JoJosReef]

What happened to this guy? Is he dead? It looked healthy two days ago, until I added some sexy shrimp which irritated it. I moved it to the back of the tank away from the shrimp and now it looks like this!

Should I remove it from the tank? Is there anything I should do to help it? None of the clean up crew has messed with it that I've seen and all this damaged appeared after I moved it away from the sexy shrimp. All my powerheads have anemone guards.

Two other rock flowers and 3 bubble tips are doing just fine, along with a few corals such as 3 different chalices, two duncans, a candycane, an anacropora, a monti cap, two favites, and an acan, plus some softies like leathers, zoas, gsp, xenia, palythoa, clove polyps, etc. All parameters are within the normal range, except for phosphates which are high at 0.30 ppm but have been as high as .51 without this anemone showing issues.

Not looking very good. I would leave it alone. Does it attach with its foot or is it remaining unattached? Sexy shrimp shouldn't kill an RFA, and they usually adapt to the sexies taking residence. Anything else off in the tank?

 

[Zakary2003]

Not looking very good. I would leave it alone. Does it attach with its foot or is it remaining unattached? Sexy shrimp shouldn't kill an RFA, and they usually adapt to the sexies taking residence. Anything else off in the tank?

It is very loosely attached to a rock. It didn't burrow its foot in the sand this time like it did before it got irritated by the shrimp.

Phosphate is the only thing off in the tank compared to my normal values. No ammonia and nitrite, between 10-25 nitrate (the color is in between the two values on my salifert kit), 1.025 SG salinity, 450 calcium, alkalinity 8.7dkh, phosphate at 0.30ppm, ph drops to around 7.8-7.9 at night and peaks around 8.2-8.3 during the day. I don't test or dose magnesium unless my calcium or alkalinity arent stable. Temps are high at 81 F, but have been stable all summer and nothing seemed affected until now. I haven't changed anything except for adding the sexy shrimp trio and a pair of banggai cardinals.

 

[JoJosReef]

Nothing else looks off. Can't rule aside that the introduction of the sexy shrimp and downhill slope of the RFA is coincidence. It may have been losing health and the sexies stressed it enough to where it started shedding it's skirt tentacles and gaping.

I've had very little success bringing RFAs back from that state. They usually proceed to hide themselves under a rock and wither away. A drastic measure would be to take out the RFA (which is already not well attached) and put it in an antibiotic dip such as ciprofloxacin. Then return it to the tank in a nem cup/basket with its foot in something solid like a PVC end cap. Can do this multple times to increase the efficacy of the antibiotic treatment--whole tank treatment is also an option, but I personally wouldn't do it for an RFA. In my only successful revivals, I leave them alone. Don't feed them large foods. But I do give them a dusting of particulate foods like OysterFeast and PacPods from ReefNutrition. A light dusting of a powdered food might be an adequate substitute. You'll see that the stressed nem's tentacles are not sticky. They won't grab food. So particulate is the best you can do until those tentacles grow back and become sticky again--that's a good sign the nem is coming back.