Long Tentacle Anemone

It sounds like your anemone is dying. Long tentacle anemones need intense lighting provided by Halides, or T5's anything less eventually leads to their death. The pale/clear appearance also indicated poor health and condition. Have you fed it? Anemones do need to be fed, especially in tanks where the lighting may not be intense enough to support them.

I hate to say this, and maybe someone else can chime in. But at this point if it doesn't respond to feeding I would say it's too far gone. It can be fed mysis. Defrost if and then use a turkey baster or syringe to put the mysis in the center of the anemone. I would watch for the first signs of it starting to "melt" or come apart. Depending on how large it is the death of an anemone could potentially crash a 29 gallon tank. I would add a good amount of carbon if you have it handy.

Edited by CapnMorgan - October 14 2010 at 12:26am

It was bright white when I bought it. I will look out for it melting but this seems way fast to me no? 

I just got home and its not looking very good.... I think I might have to get rid of it just to save the tank. Is there anything else that I should do to the tank now that it is gone as far as water changes etc? Is there an anemone that will live under these lights? 

I just did a water change yesterday and added a bunch of carbon. Would you do it again? 

Many people think pure white anemones are extremely pretty, and are sometimes told they are rare when they purchase them.  However, anemones are not supposed to be white so never buy an anemone that is pure white. 

All anemones, at least the ones we want to put in our tanks, have symbiotic algae, zooxanthellae, that help to feed them.  The color of the zooxanthellae are what determine the color of the anemone.  A white anemone has expelled all of it's zooxanthellae and is not healthy.  (Zooxanthellae are not white.)  This sometimes happens during the stress of shipping, especially if the collector, wholesaler, or LFS has not kept it under sufficient lighting.  It is very difficult to nurse such an anemone back to health once it reaches this stage.  I have heard from a few that have had such luck that they were dissapointed that their beautiful white anemone is now kind of a brownish, or greenish color and "I wonder what I'm doing wrong."  In fact it's what they are doing right that caused the color to change back to a healthy one.

So frustrating! I know that I should know more before buying things, but surely the store owners do know what they are selling to a completely naive person. Thanks for all of your help!

Haley'sfish wrote: So frustrating! I know that I should know more before buying things, but surely the store owners do know what they are selling to a completely naive person. Thanks for all of your help!

You aren't always dealing with the store manager/owner just the hired help. A lot of times they know less than you because their experience is limited to taking care of the store. We could probably make a 10 page list of stupid stuff fish store workers have told us that is completely wrong. It's not all of them.... but some of them have pretty limited knowledge.

Make sure you do your research before buying any livestock to make sure you can take care of it or that it will do well in your tank. Not every fish or coral out there is going to do well in just any old sw tank. They have very specific needs that sometimes aren't even met by high end tanks.

Bob- I would have gladly taken you up on that, I got home Wednesday night late and I think it was safe to say it was "melting". I appreciate your offer though, I wish I would have asked all of this earlier.