Ritteri losing tentacles

[Small Heavens]

All living things have immune system and fight/suppress infection. Just because they have immune system, it does not mean that their immune system win every time, especially given the stress associated with collection and transport across the world in a small bag of contaminated water. Stress free environment is essential but not possible in transport unless we want to pay prohibit high cost. Like I said on my treatment protocol, antibiotic is essential for the survival of many of these anemones when first import. The survival rate improved drastically when we treat these anemones with antibiotic especially when they are newly imported. I never have to treat any of my anemones with antibiotic after the first few weeks. This is very similar with us taken antibiotic for pneumonia or kidney infection or sepsis. With antibiotic, fewer of us died from these infections. Survival of these animal long term will depends on the environment that they keep in.

Small Heavens,
I am not trying to convince you of anything, but I hope at least you read the introduction of the antibiotic protocol I wrote.
Regarding allelopathy, one cannot proof negative, other than seeing that they live with each other without problem. I cannot proof that the anemones do not kill each other with allelopathy, but you should be able to proof positive if there is actually allolepathy. Where is your proof that there are allelopathy, what substance release that will harm another anemones and not harm the anemone that releasing it?

Logically, any toxin release will damage the anemone that is releasing it the most. Injection toxin into another animal is another mater. Anemones and corals already have mechanism to wages wars by direct injection, much more potent and efficient method of killing competitors. They don't need to evolved toxin to be release into the water to attack other animals around them. Other than Octopus releasing ink to escapes(not killing their attacker), I cannot think of any living thing releasing anything into the air or water to kill competitors. Secreting antibiotic or toxin on land where it stay where it release does not count (not the same thing). There are plenty of these examples on land organism, mostly plants.

Are my animal stressed or not? I let the results speak for themselves.

*Wow, there is this social dynamics, mostly found in teenage girls, where people decide there is only one way of being, and then try to freeze out any other type of behaviour other than that. I am honestly not sure why you care to make such a big deal out of it.

Minh, I suggest that you read lots more about this, you thinking something sounds logical does not compete with laboratory tests of what toxins does to tissue of living things, that is fact, here we are just sharing observations because we want to help eachother. Corals, Anemones and Jellyfish, are all cousins, that learned to live different places. The jellyfish is a polyp flowing around because it learned to stay mobile, they can have some braincells for mapping food source and such but they lost most of their photosynthetic behaviour which is found in only few species today. Anemones are jellyfish that didn't care to move and have a strong bond of photosynthetic organisms that it actually just captured once upon a time, now they give them to their eggs and clones and don't have to capture them because evolution is beautiful that way.

One type of soft coral, it is very red, looks like a branching coral or something hanging from a jellyfish, and it actually lives inside caves in the wild.

That is caves with low flow, so they can poison the entire cave.

They do this to capture prey without the prey putting up a fight. Yes Minh, corals understand flow through ages of evolution driving them to act automated in a world of competition and they do most certainly bomb eachother over large bodies of water if they can get the flow to hit right, which is...rather simple in a tank, because as you said, it does require pretty strong toxins to hit eachother in a body of water such as the ocean itself .... ... . .. . .

 

[Small Heavens]

I didn't notice any question.

So you have "experience" with just one single anemone and on top of that a rather hardy one. That hardly counts as a representative sample and certainly doesn't make you an authority on the matter or gives you the right to school far more experienced people here who have years of experience with nearly every species of host anemone there is.

And giving people who are seeking help here misleading information based on your very limited experience and twisted ideology is just callous and endangering the health and welfare of those people's animals.

Gigantea, magnifica, and often also crispa and malu are far more sensitive to shipping stress and the first two are particularly susceptible for contracting infections.
Before treating of these sick anemones was done with Cipro, despite best efforts and ideal conditions, they would succumb to the infection in nearly every case.
Widespread success with these anemones has only become possible due to Minh's antibiotic treatment protocol. Before that buying these anemones was a gamble the anemone mostly lost.
Today most anemones can be saved if they get treated in time.

I tried it both ways and in my experience doing nothing when and anemone is sick will lead to the death of the anemone in each and every case. Even throwing them back into the ocean wouldn't change their fate.

Well I asked at least two. You counterargue a lot for a person who don't read carefully in order to not get anything wrong, which is an ominous turn on our blossoming friendship.

I take it as a compliment that you think I have experience with only one anemone which then just lived amazingly in my care I suppose, but I never said anything but REMEMBER ALLELOPATHY AND DONT MISUSE ANTIBIOTICS, which was, I admit alittle less than politely spoken by me, but I nevertheless I am still right about pointing out both. I also explained to you, that buying big does not necessarily give the SAME insight as having 24/7 to observe these nice little blubberplants, and I recommend that y'all try the light provocation thang that I mentioned. That y'all wanna say it does not work WITHOUT trying it, speaks volumes for how systematic you actually approach getting your observations, lighten up, don't take criticism so badly that you give the impression that it was valid in the first place. Just tell me that you think about what you do with antibiotics, and the discard water, and I could have said nothing more about the case. Now I have y'all saying that using antibiotics in manners that is actually illegal in allllll of europe, is fino fino and we have Minh in utter denial of allelopathy all together, and you should take it more easy when talking to a European, expect me to have europe values and to be in disagreement with laws of the US, anything else makes you somewhat unprepared to speak with millions of people in a forum like this. You really don't have to take it personally.

You still haven't really said anything that makes me feel differently. You are not at home to deal with the Anemones you buy. You leave for work, and the Nem deflates around noon to get energy to rearrange the nettings and after the transport halfway over the globe, runs out of energy, the tentacles suffer oxygen deprivation and rotting sets in. If you look at it under a microscope, tons of bacteria will be going at the Nem at this stage and your finding might indicate that you can ARREST the spread of rot after it has started, by killing any bacteria in, on or near the Nem.

But I STILL argue, that the problem STARTS because of the way nems act when relocating.

The bigger the skirts of the nem (such as ritteri) to more days it needs to fine-tune the placing of its super weak structure that is nothing like human muscle fibers.

To safeguard your investments and all these precious specimens already saved from the oceans, I suggest you make your own investigation into this, but, you just dismissed it out right, so your loss, not mine.

I know you do anything you can for these creatures, I just keep a different path, I would never remove all the bacteria that an Nem comes in with unless absolutely necessary because it will never return and we need to do anything we can to maintain a natural biodiversity. I do not argue the point that antibiotics can arrest bacteria from making a problem worse - I am arguing that Nems needs nothing but a few moments to start decomposition because of oxygen deprivation WHICH easily happen because of the Nems not being at full energy levels when introduced to home aquariums. I suggest using LED lightning to fully provoke the hell out of the Nem if it deflated sufficiently BUT I also claim that most % of you, will not have enough time to actually monitor the Nem fully and prevent this from happening in the time it takes a creature such as the ritteri, to rearrange itself. Times changes and so does human ingenuity

 

[Small Heavens]

I don't think they are actually release them as a method of control competitor growth in water. I think high concentration of the plants does release some chemical as waste. The water in the ocean is too vast, circulation is too much, to make releasing chemical into the water as method of control competitor growth feasible.

Many animals and plants use chemical releasing into air or water, or deposit to mark territory, pheromones, as signal to each other, but not as weapons of war. Plants have chemicals in it leaves to inhibit other plant growth under it shade. Leaves fall and deposit these chemical around the plant to keep other plants growing there.

I will try to read any reference you may have and eat my word on this topic if you provide them.

Minh, you have to accept scientific evidence even if it turns out your own impressions was not true. Testing if something damages tissue or not, is really not a big issue, which is why many schools use microscopes to show children what happens to the cells of a houseplant if you water it with saltwater, accept allelopathy, stop having second guesses for something that have be shown with the tools of science.

 

[Small Heavens]

Wow! What total bullshit! Just ignore this guy. What nonsense.

Planetmarco seemingly did not test my suggestion, so imma gonna not spend any time on it.

 

[Small Heavens]

BTW, the anemone is the "host" who is 'hosting' the anemonefish who are the "guests".

And I suppose you actually mean "species tank" as specimen tank/container means something different.

ThRoewer, define a clown, biologically.
You are literally a citizen of the united states, correct? So you, literally, do not have a language? You speak the slang you make up as most popularly spoken along the way, yes? You call one fish, a fish, and several fishes, fish, and I will never in my life care to debate the proper use of language with you.

A specimen tank means that the tank keeps a single specimen, do you speak language or only Walmart products? Specimen tank is very often used when referring to anemone husbandry since they are best kept in a single specimen environment

A species tank, is used for multiple members of the same species, which is not what I keep. I keep an anemone tank with one anemone in it. It has two host fishes and a long list of stuff that is not worth mentioning in the bigger picture, such as only LR imported from Sulawesi blablabla, point is, I have a full right to mention that ignoring allelopathy is not good. I have a full right to pointing out that using antibiotics this much might be a little over the top.

You honestly do not know if the Nems are surviving because you pour so many chemicals at them that they flush out their internal water more often, thereby preventing the effect of oxygen deprivation that I mentioned before - I just tried to make you learn even more, now it seems like the string is getting all about the place as long as you can agree that I am wrong, right?

It turned out that Minh does indeed know much, but not so much about allelopathy and we are all adding our observations here to help those who are somehow struggling with their Nems, right?

I just add stuff like, don't let your Nem turn upside down, because oxygen deprivation can kill it fast and they take time to put out their structure so help them NOT DEFLATE FOR LONG PERIODS.

 

[Small Heavens]

"If the Nem deflates so badly that it can suffer oxygen depletion in the tentacles " ...only 1 thing I can add to this weird discussion- back in the day (early 80's) before all this talk of antibiotic treatment..I had a few poor looking magnifica specimens (inflate/deflate) turn around by placing them in a highly lit tank that was filtered only by an algae turf scrubber with a dump bucket ...the surges of highly oxygenated water dumping back into the tank must have done wonders for those anemones...no abx...FWIW.

I totally agree with HotTuna, the Nems want a good source of water inside their mouth and until they can worm themselves to be in the right spot, they need human insight to make sure they don't end up in trouble.

 

[Small Heavens]

I may not have to eat my words after all.
All of these studies analyzed for chemical on/in the algae or in the coral and exposed corals to high concentration of these chemical, high enough to be easily assay if it is in the water. This cause damages to corals or larvae of corals, or Zooxanthellae of other corals. To test exposure one of the study even have to put the chemical in question in a stabilization gel (so water cannot wash them away) then apply to other corals. I did not read to deep into the cyanobacterial article. Toxin of cyanobacterial are well know and not the same.

The algae article even theorized that the algae actually evolved these toxin to deter fish from eating them, not use to combat corals. Actually on and in the algae, to be ingest by fish that try to eat the algae and sicken them.

Regarding the corals, once cannot conclude from the study that the method of delivery of these toxin is to release them into the water. If this is the case, they can easily detect by measure to concentration of these chemical around the corals.

Minh, again I can only say that you seem unaware that testing what a substance does to a specific tissue is factual and your reflections are human reflections, which unfortunately, is not facts. When we test metal stress, we don't wait the full term, we put the metal under tons of stress right now, so we can see what what does to what, that you disprove anything about allelopathy nomatter what body of evidence is put before you, does not help you shine with the efforts you have been making in your own right.

 

[Small Heavens]

Releasing toxins en masse into the water column to fight off competitors long distance would probably be inefficient on a reef given the high flow rates. But algae and corals most definitely engage in chemical warfare via contact or close proximity.
In a small, closed system like a reef tank released toxins certainly can accumulate and cause problems.

You are taking a lot of time with reflective guessing. Water current come in patterns year after year and the toxins are indeed rather powerful because as you said, it has to make an effect while actually being diluted into very big areas at the same time.

 

[Small Heavens]

Well, doctors prescribe broadband antibiotics every day just based on their observations and experience without actually obtaining a precise identification of the pathogen first.

The fact that the antibiotics treatment of anemones has proven to work over and over makes it a valid approach even if the actual pathogen hasn't identified yet.



No, it can't be said both ways.
The definition of "host" (in biology) is: "an animal or plant on or in which a parasite or commensal organism lives."
The anemone is the host, not the fish.
The fish would only be hosts to parasites they may have.

Again, there is no comparison with a doctor who understand what the common cold is, to observe that a human suffering from common cold will benefit from common cold treatments, and what you say.

The cause of death of the anemone has not been identified, and I simply suggested that normal deflation can lead to death easily if the Nem is too weak to inflate again fast enough. A static saying that the Nem then survives if strong antibiotics clean out the wound it got from oxygen deprivation, could then adequately represent the observations made by all parties here, but, you rather use your time defending how antibiotics used to be used, in a field that we all know is changing fast because of the actual condition of the world oceans. Again, define clown, biologically?

I will not debate this with you, because the clownfish host the anemone and the anemone host the clownfish, it is a symbiotic relationship, means it goes both ways sweetie.

 

[Small Heavens]

My point exactly. Organism certainly compete with each other for space and resources. For the reef, competition happen with contact. Releasing toxin into the water, not so much since it is too inefficient.

Minh, please stop repeating that your impression goes against science. They release toxins when they sense eachother, they never stop, they grow more used to eachother but they don't stop, and the exact problem is that it is rather strong toxins in order to reach eachother at open waters and we dump all of that into the garden tanks.

The good news is that allelopathy is a real physical factor in your water column so aggressive skimming will actually remove a good portion of it.

And - nobody said you can not keep two or more trees RIGHT NEXT TO EACHOTHER just because one will reach the better size and block out sun from the other depending on how good they are placed compared to eachother. If both trees live they live, great, nobody was criticising you.



The POINT here, is that if you GUESS what is wrong with the Nem in the first place but ignore allelopathy, then people reading online might get the wrong impression.

If you, still, don't think allelopathy makes compatibility problems, I suggest that you read around on wet web media . com until you learn more - anyway, wow, let us now stop REPEATING where we stand.

You do not gain traction for anything by trying to mock me as the outsider, you can take or leave my advice but only trolls sit around and enjoy the process of disagreeing with people so try to round up whatever you have to say to me.

There is never ONE path in this hobby and I respect that people does different things but you seem unable to accept anything I said, down to the fact that clownfishes living in anemones get longer life because they gain many things >>> including a vibrant bacteria culture in their slimecoat that protects them, transferred from the slimecoat of their anemones.

I would try to avoid disinfection of every single anemone and you prefer to get rid of all bacteria and in that way, we are different.

That does not mean that I lost anything here, I can go on learning from the internet and my own observations and y'all can then return to trying what I suggested when nobody else is looking.

 

[Small Heavens]

I apologise if typos or language difference makes a bother in advance but you don't seem that much into hard facts anyway, so I am sure you can live with it

Have a nice day y'all
Best wishes ~ Sofie

 

[Planetmacro]

Planetmarco seemingly did not test my suggestion, so imma gonna not spend any time on it.

My anemones are doing just fine. I don't need to entertain your voodoo nonsense. Aquarist here are looking for sound advice. Provide empirical evidence and use standardized terminology so people can understand what you're talking about. Otherwise you're just trolling.

 

[Small Heavens]

Planetmarco, yeah....that Nems react to light is voodoo, right, and btw. I will provide you with the exact same amount of empirical evidence as I would for you for magnetism: absolutely zero - do enjoy your free ability to do research online.

 

[Small Heavens]

Seriously, get over it, all you guys had to do was say "I have already tried that" but nooooooo, you never said the magic words did you, anyway, have fun y'all.

 

[ThRoewer]

...
You are literally a citizen of the united states, correct? So you, literally, do not have a language? ...

Incorrect on both accounts.

 

[OrionN]

Sofie,
I was going to write a long reply to point out what is wrong with what you wrote, but what is the use. There are so many problems with what you wrote that it will take me all day, and I am too busy and not have the time.



You keep on saying that you are scientific base and I am not. However, your logic is so full of holes and what you wrote/think as facts are just word you wrote without any base without any credible support.


Just to let you know, I am a practicing physician. I came from Vietnam and a teenager, not knowing any English. Able to take advantage of the US educational system (I am eternally grateful for this) and did well enough to get admitted to medical school after college.

Throughout my education from middle school though medical school I work and did research. Form animals to medical research on human. I have published.

Regarding our hobby, I had two key contributions. The first is the protocol for treating Pinched Mantel Disease in Clams with fresh water dip in the early 2000, and the second is the protocol for antibiotic treatment of Anemones.
My research publications were all in the early 1980's before the internet was widely available.



All of this is just to let you know that the scientific methods are well know to me. I am well train in research. I can observed and I am reasonably intelligent person.



I even trying to contemplate trying to ID some of the bacterial that cause anemone infections. I wrote to Kevin at LiveAquaria and got him to agree to send me Gigantea and Magnifica so I can culture them. at the end I did not go though with it. Even with the free anemones promised by Kevin the cost of the project was prohibit high. The antibiotic protocol was a success already. The antibiotic was cheap and widely available. I did not think that I need to ID and narrow the treatment protocol.


Good luck with the hobby. I will read but not reply to anything else you wrote. You got the last word.

 

[Small Heavens]

Sofie,
I was going to write a long reply to point out what is wrong with what you wrote, but what is the use. There are so many problems with what you wrote that it will take me all day, and I am too busy and not have the time.



You keep on saying that you are scientific base and I am not. However, your logic is so full of holes and what you wrote/think as facts are just word you wrote without any base without any credible support.


Just to let you know, I am a practicing physician. I came from Vietnam and a teenager, not knowing any English. Able to take advantage of the US educational system (I am eternally grateful for this) and did well enough to get admitted to medical school after college.

Throughout my education from middle school though medical school I work and did research. Form animals to medical research on human. I have published.

Regarding our hobby, I had two key contributions. The first is the protocol for treating Pinched Mantel Disease in Clams with fresh water dip in the early 2000, and the second is the protocol for antibiotic treatment of Anemones.
My research publications were all in the early 1980's before the internet was widely available.



All of this is just to let you know that the scientific methods are well know to me. I am well train in research. I can observed and I am reasonably intelligent person.



I even trying to contemplate trying to ID some of the bacterial that cause anemone infections. I wrote to Kevin at LiveAquaria and got him to agree to send me Gigantea and Magnifica so I can culture them. at the end I did not go though with it. Even with the free anemones promised by Kevin the cost of the project was prohibit high. The antibiotic protocol was a success already. The antibiotic was cheap and widely available. I did not think that I need to ID and narrow the treatment protocol.


Good luck with the hobby. I will read but not reply to anything else you wrote. You got the last word.

Minh, you wanted to disprove Allelopathy, I said the science behind that was undisputable, not that my opinion were.

You didn't actually ever reflect on what I said, you just felt criticised and started defending your self but if you start defending a position without thinking it through, you can weaken your own position greatly. Oh that's actually great, making your own place in life I mean, although you did not have to tell me you come from Vietnam, I figured that out already

And I am actually really happy that you did make all that effort, but as I said, had you a more humble character, you would receive much more love and adoration for that contribution, you are just not very affable.

To be honest I am glad you did not use your resources on that specific idea, from what I have seen so far, studies of anemone bacteria is proving rather difficult as they seem to constantly change without much to explain why. But anyway, I have as I said, already read what I could find of your texts (here on this forum I mean), but other than that I don't know of your work.

It is just, easy to throw antibiotics after something and the condition of our oceans and general waterways are changing.

In this case there was some mentioning in the OP of keeping nems in the main DT and in such a case allelopathy should indeed be considered before cripo. Just to rule OUT any other possibilities before going through your protocol Minh

I am a very nature loving person and I did indeed never take any education that helps me neither speak or study any fishes or invertebrates but a Carpet is a Carpet and a Nem with longer tentacles makes shapes that can best be described as skirts, since that shape (of skirts) is not really possible to describe anyway else.

To a degree I wish this conversation had not gone like this but on the other hand, if that teen girl culture of making an alliance about what behaviour is right and then freeze out anybody who doesn't fit is is to be followed in this forum, it is sure better to get it out in the clear so hobbyists who reads this knows the forum does not offer nuanced advice because peoples pride are at stake over how they did things themselves

Its alright, I'll still read yours and pester you with questions should I need it and if you are too emotional to help another person with a question that could help the marine life we all love so dearly, you can just ignore me at that time okay?

And honestly, have a great time and enjoy the Marine aquaria we managed to save, while it lasts

 

[Small Heavens]

Incorrect on both accounts.

Uhm....okay.
Didn't notice this earlier ThRoewer, in any regards, you can explain me the biological definition of a carpet before you lash out at me for calling a skirt a skirt, in denmark we call a spade a spade, but at the end of the day I just said 2 things and none of y'all did half as good a job at countering that as you did at putting effort into discrediting me.

I said 1: if allelopathy is a factor in the tank of an individual Nem specimen, there is no need to try antibiotics before trying to actually remove the allelopathy. 2: try provoking the hell out of it with lighting and as I already wrote earlier, all anybody had to say, was "I already tried that", so relax yourselves now, how can we enjoy eachother's differences if we only approve of one way of doing things

Also to you, have a great time, sorry I didn't notice your, short, comment earlier, the forum only gave me Minhs update at the time but as everybody else here with some experience, you are interesting to read comments from but this all turned way too personal way too quickly. If you are not a citizen in the so-called united states, I really don't see why you should be so shocked by people opposing their customs of using antibiotics.

The problem is never people who know what they are doing and act with good moral. The problem is that anybody can get these antibiotics and not anybody just treat it right.

It was never, and will never be my fault that y'all jumped in when I said that antibiotics can be misused, you should have all just insisted that you ever only handle it with 100% awesome godlike perfection and care and then we could have all talked about how somebody else somewhere might not know how to do it right and you could have repeated all the right ways of doing things BUT NO, we didn't do that, we just got into a debate about our differences.. let's all try to spend our time better in the future, I already said it all probably started because I managed to be less than polite to the OP but none of you allowed me to make that yeild to you, I several times offered we jumped back to debating the actual anemone and clownfish slimecoat or bacterial cultures etc., you pretty much all debated me as I would expect you to debate with your spouses or those who love you.

Let us forget about our differences, you like antibiotics all over your Nems, I like importing LR from the same place as the aquaria in general and the same goes for the bacterial cultures on the Nem. I am happy that it never went through a disinfection process like what you say you do to the more "difficult" nems.

Just remember, that anemones with "skirts" (not carpets) will deflate to rearrange themselves and they often run out of energy midway. This can happen around noon when people are away from home, often about a month into acclimatization, it also often happen at evening time. They will then recuperate over night and try again the next day. If it keeps having less than optimal energy, it begins to eat through the zooxanthellae, deflating more and more in order to both eat, pull in skirt, put out skirt, and exceed waste, all at the same time.

If at all possible, observe the anemone as much often as you can and each time it deflate to a degree that is of any concern, do something with your light setting, until the Nem reacts by inflating enough to not be able to trigger gangrene in the tentacles.

You might not need my advice, but, people read these strings for years and years trying to come up with answers for stuff like keeping anemones and at least they can read and try it out, perhaps it works for them.

 

[Planetmacro]

:hmm4:

 

[ThRoewer]

I would suggest reading up on anemone anatomy. The so called "carpet" anemones have the same anatomy as all the other members of the Stichodactylidae which represent the majority of what is called host-anemones. And the anatomy of the Stichodactylidae doesn't differ in any significant way from that of all other Actiniaria or even Hexacorallia if you just look at the soft tissue.
The difference in tentacle length is really insignificant in that regard and in fact only S. haddoni and S. tapetum have actually consistently short tentacles. All other members of this family can contract or expand their tentacles to at least some degree as needed.