my hidden bubble tip

[PhotoJohn]

I got a nice grayish brown bubble with pink tips from my lfs and plopped it in my reef tank and it has hidden under a ledge in a dark crevis for 2-3 weeks. I am getting worried. My gold stripe has claimed it for his home but I am worried if his home is going to be gone, i dont want a homeless gold stripe. I had fed him small bits of silver sides a few times...the stars always try to steal it. So my question, is it normal for a bubble tip to hide? Should I be worried? What can I do? Oh, I also have a carpet on the other end of the tank (which my paired osc. clowns wont touch LFS liars). The carpet does great and is active...not moving locations just opening and closing. I also have 8.7 watts per gallon. thanks for the help...

John

[CarmieJo]

Hi John,

Is the BTA where you can see him at all? Or what I really want to know is is he getting light? You have pretty much light in your tank and it may be that he is not used to this level.

[PhotoJohn]

The BTA gets a bit of light when it is fully expanded but otherwise it is pretty dark back under the ledge. The ledge is 2 inch or so off the black sand bed (which I love) and the cave is several inchs deep. If I had white sand I'm sure that would kick light up in there but I liked the black look...I guess as long as its happy it will stay where it is...just wish I could see the BTA

[doctorthompson]

John, I know from other posts that you have (or had) a fairly high fish load in your tank, what are your water parameters, particularly nitrate, looking like? How long did you quarantine it for? How did you acclimate it to your display tank?

My first guess would be light shock from too quick of an acclimation or dumping it in the tank with the lights. Did you quarantine it under the same or similar illumination as your display tank? (I only use normal output bulbs for quarantine, but the brightness is roughly the same since my quarantine tank only has about 7 inches of water).

My second guess is elevated nitrate. BTAs can handle elevated nitrate levels better than most anemones, and usually quite a bit more than most aquarium literature would lead you to believe - or at least they'll tolerate it long enough for you to fix it. I've seen a few other people's BTAs retract into dark areas before and the common factor in each case was high nitrate levels. Nitrate shouldn't stay above 10ppm for extended periods of time (or when still stressed from moving/quarantining/acclimating. I know you mention your carpet is fine, but it may have grown accustomed to the nitrate over a period of weeks (or it may be getting poisoned to death slowly). My carpet folds up and generally acts weird if I let our nitrate get above 10ppm.

PS. By 10ppm I mean 10ppm using a salifert or other "clear-to-purple" test, or around 40ppm using one of those 2-part "yellow-to-red" liquid tests (Aquarium Pharm. "Master" kits, etc)

[PhotoJohn]

I tested all my levels a week ago and everything was fine...0ppm or so close I couldnt tell a difference. I am going to retest now. I expect levels to be higher because I had to pull my filters a week ago when I started treating for ick. One of my serpent stars also pulled a dead fish somewhere into the rock in the night. I really dont want to take my entire tank apart to find that little clown. I normally feed the star silver sides and I am hoping he will just eat it. Thats an expensive lunch. I also have a few colonies of sea grapes, that may help keep the nitrates down. Alright, test time over. The results are in:nitrate=0ppm, nitrite=0ppm, ammonia=0ppm, and my trouble test PH is at 7.8 but I am dosing it with Marine buffer to bring it up. The ick fighter that doesnt work also can lower ph.

As to the question about acclimation. I drip everything that goes into my tank for an hour or two. When I drip them they sit at the base of the tank getting light from a big window and the filted light from my tank. However I am sure that is no where near the light my tank gets. So I dripped the poor bta and plopped him in, being sure the BTA and carpet stayed clear of one another. I have 3 display tanks and no hospital tank. I guess I should work on that. It would have saved me a little over $100. For that much I could have set up a nice hospital tank with beds and a nurse.