You Thought Your Weekend Was Bad

My poor bubble anemone had a really bad weekend. On Saturday it decided it didn't like its home anymore so it decided to move. Instead of crawling to a new home it decided to be lazy and float to a new home. I witnessed it detach from its rock and float across the tank. It tumbled through the water like a tumbleweed. Not unlike the opening scene to the Big Lebowski. It ended up getting lodged against a rock on the other side of the tank. A little later I saw it firmly attached to the left-side glass. I went and ran some errands that afternoon. When I came home I found it sucked up against the intake of my hang-on-the back filter. The anemone's tentacles were sucked into the tiny openings of the input screen. These are really small algae encrusted slits but somehow the tentacles made it in there. I was able to turn off the filter and pull the tentacles out. The anemone was shriveled up but I knew it would be fine because the tentacles came out so easily. I placed it against a rock and it soon grabbed it with its foot and opened up. Crisis averted.

So I thought. Overnight it decided to float around the tank again. In the morning it was stuck up against the filter again. This time it was much more difficult to extract it. Little pieces of junk started floating around when I started pulling it out. It took about 10 or 15 minutes to extract it from the screen. One small piece with about 3 tentacles ripped off in the process. The anemone looked really bad afterwards. I turned off the power heads to stop the current in the tank and placed it on the sand up against a rock. Again, a few hours later it attached to the rock and opened. It looks fine now but if anemones can feel pain it must have been in agony for a while.

I decided to leave the powerheads off for a while. I'm not sure what has upset my anemone. It may be the current. It is awfully high with my two new Koralia 3 power heads installed. Even with one powerhead off and one on the current is still really high. Even if it isn't the current that is bothering it I'll leave the powerheads off for a while just in case the anemone decides to dislodge itself again. With less current in the tank there is less of a chance of it floating up to the filter intake again.

What is up with the creatures of my tank getting sucked up into filters and powerheads anyway? These were episodes 3 and 4 respectively.