I've got a problem. I've had my anemone for about 2 and a half months now. For about the first month and a half, the anemone did great! I fed it Mysis and Brine shrimp every week... My clown fishes also bonded with it within the first month, but didn't seem to be harrasing it. After about a month and a half, it lost all it's tentacles except for a few. The clownfish don't go near it now. And every time I feed it, it blows up like a balloon. I guess he would look normal if he had all his tentacles. He looks really healthy and I've started feeding him half a silver side every 4-7 days.

I don't have exact water parameters, but my 20 or so zoanthids, tube worms, feather dusters, and fish aren't showing any signs of nitrates...

It's a 29 gallon tank. I've got about 80 lbs of live rock. a MJ600 and an MJ1200 power head, 192 watt PC lighting with 6700k bulbs (What it came with), 20 lbs of aragonite, about 7 snails, 3-4 dwarf hermits, a blue damsel, a yellowtail damsel, a yellow watchman goby, a firefish goby, 2 peppermint shrimp and my pair of ocellaris clowns and the bubble tip anemone.

The blue damsel and firefish goby we're just added recently.

Here are some pics my wife took this morning:








How can I get him to grow his tentacles back?

This was a picture of him just a month or so after I got him.



I've placed him high up on my liverock. He's not getting any direct flow. I feel I should add another powerhead though. Theres a slight current in the tank. I'm also turning both bulbs on now, instead of just one. I've got them both on timers. One comes on from 12-10, and the other one comes on from 2 to 8.

Can anyone help me figure out what's going on?

Thanks.

Did you do anything major to the tank just prior to the loss of the tentacles? Such as a water change, re-arrangement, etc? If so, what did you do, how did you do it, and how long before the loss of the tentacles?

The anemone closed up, and then when it opened, no tentacles. No major action before it did this. No new additions, etc. The clowns we're playing in the anemone alot. I assume this caused quite a bit of stress.

It's odd that they are not growing back.

No water changes, changes in salinity, etc?

The clowns playing in it would not have caused this.

Is he in the 29 gallon with the pc fixture running one bulb?
An anemone needs at least 4-8 watts per gallon to be able to be ok.

IF so then you would need to run 2 bulbs in order for the anemone to survive. I seen a friend who had an anemone in a 20 gallon with 130watt of pc and it lost its tentacles. HE later switched to a 29 gallon with 175 of MH and it grew back its tentacles within a month.

Sounds good. Clowns can abuse an anemone by playing in it too much SM. In the wild they have several anemones, however, in a tank, only one.

I was running one bulb r33f-boy. I've set up both bulbs on timers just the other day, so that's going to bring it up to 192 watts. I'm purchasing a 150w metal halide lamp in the next month or so... I'm still researching information, though, but I'm pretty sure that's the one I'm going to go with. I'm hoping by feeding him more and a varied diet, coupled with the increase in light, is going to help. I'll keep you posted.

I hear anemones can lose their tentacles from starvation, and I was feeding him very lightly about every week or two. I was grossly wrong about how much they needed to eat. I've since started feeding more.

Do you think I would be ok with my setup of the two 1050 lumen eclipse bulbs running 10hrs/day plus the 725 lumen retrofit light that runs 24/7.

How much watts are we talking about? I'm not a light expert so i dont know about lumens, but 6,7 kelvins-20,000 kelvins are good from corals and anemones.

heh, and I don't know the watts... except the 3rd add on light is a 33 watt flourescent. My guess on the other two would be around 50 watts each, for a total of around 125-133 watts in the total tank (all flourescent). Oh, and it's a 29g, so it's not that big.

Your eclipse light is two 18 watt bulbs.

Yup, you're right, I mis-calculated the wattage required to produce that much light.

Still, I basically have as much light as two 75 watt incadescent bulbs.

They produce that many lumens? Not bad.