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Very sad BTA crash...

So after years of successful BTA keeping I had a strange and sudden crash which wiped out many of my prized BTAs. I lost flame tips, green tips, the lemondrop... gah. I was so upset I actually stopped reading the forums for awhile.

At first I thought that maybe it had to do with the anemone propagation I was doing, but the BTA decline wasn't limited to anemones that I had cut, it took down anemones that were untouched and had been happy in my tank for months. I even moved some of the sick anemones back into another tank with other anemones and those anemones (previously healthy and uncut) began to take a dive as well!!

I ran aggressive water changes, ozone, carbon, etc... nothing stopped the decline. The anemones would start to spit out messentrial filaments, crumple their tentacles, wander around the tank and then lose anchor and inflate and deflate. Some started to melt, so I pulled those. The others I tried to quarantine.

At this point, I have one of the Dolphin Pet Village green tips that is doing psuedo ok and a white speckled BTA that inflates and deflates a lot but I think will pull through. I also have two Colorado Sunbursts which seem to be 100% fine. Of course, all of the cheapo roses are doing great. I noticed that the ones that have been surviving are those anemones which have been captive bred for a long time. The colorado sunbursts and roses...

I think my mistake was adding too many new wild caught anemone morphs. I suspect that maybe one of the anemones came in with a bacterial or viral infection and it spread. I don't think it's allelopathy, because it affects anemones that were previously perfectly fine together for many months.

Anyways... after being really discouraged about this for awhile, figured I'd come out an vent it off my chest.

Thankfully, I have managed to drown my BTA sorrows in mini carpets.
 
"just as we think we have learned all there is, and new lesson presents itself", this is what my grandfather used to tell me all the time.....

I thought about this a lot myself when I had my last crash, as I felt I was doing just about everything right, my tank tought me different
 
Thanks guys. Losing stock and prized pieces every now and then just seems to be something we must all accept in this hobby. On the bright side, most everything else is doing fantastic and after talking to Tyler at DPV, I am going to try Furan anti-biotic dips to see if that has any effect on a few of the afflicted ones.
 
Hey Josh! I didn't know you were on the BAR forums! :)

No, that sunburst looks fantastic. He even split after making it into the tank. He's the one bright spot to the whole BTA debacle.

+1 on long lineage captive bred nems!
 
FYI, Josh's Colorado Sunburst is one of the prettiest BTAs I have ever seen. It's not really a traditional flame tip (i.e.: Red tentacles with yellow tips), but it is extremely striking. The fact that it survived my BTA crash is an added bonus.
 
Sigh. Fire anemone was in a different tank and crawled into a koralia nano. I didn't think that stupid little pump even pushed enough water to pull anything into it! :p
 
That sucks Jason. That lemondrop was so cool looking.

i had the same problem as Jason and lost 2 flame tip anemones (that i traded with him). The disease also spread to 2 additional anemones in my tank (another flame and a green with orange tips anemone) but it looks as both of them are starting to recover. The green with orange tips started to perk up day before yesterday and has now fully extended itself to the light and the flame stopped deflating itself and now just hides under some rocks and sticks a few of its tentacles out. I'm hoping that it will fully recover soon.

Very weird stuff. On the good side, this incident has motivated me to get my anemone prop tank started so that I can start chopping and trading the anemones I have left as soon as possible.
 
I'm so sorry Patrick!

I didn't even know BTAs suffered from these types of infections. I was pretty suspicious of either a viral or bacterial infection before, but given what happened to you, I am pretty certain this is some type of BTA disease. Especially since it seemed to afflict uncut anemones in different tanks!

(I was previously thinking allelopathy, but I don't think it's that anymore.)

I have three anemones that have been withering away for the past 2 months, now taking 30 minute Furan dips every other day. They will be on their third bath tomorrow. I'll let you know if that seems to make a difference.

Well, at least we are advancing our knowledge of BTA husbandry. Too bad it had to be done with flametips, sunbursts and a lemondrop. :p
 
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