Impending anemone death, what should I do?

[sfsuphysics]

Ok an anemone I've had for a while has been on a downward spiral every since it lost the ability to stick via its tenticles (and I have fed silversides every other day or so up until that point). Now its foot is a bloated mass as it tries to move around, its mouth is shriveled up, its tenticles are no longer than the bumps on a ricordia mushroom, this anemone is going to die. There's no way to feed it since it can't grab anything, and its currently upside down on the rock (rather than on top) so putting a silverside on the oral disc and hoping it closes up around it doesnt' seem like a problem.

So I'm curious now, should I remove it now? Should will it release a burst of toxins when it dies? Or is it something that is treatable (ie I can see its dead, and remove the remains? Will any sort of scavengers in the tank eat it up?

If I do remove it is there a more or less "humane" way to finish it off? I know its going to die but I really would feel bad if I just tossed it in the garbage and it "suffocated" to death.

[RockyMtnReef]

The most humane to euthanize an aquatic animal is to place it in a bag of tank water and then put the sealed bag in the freezer. As far as helping your Anemone, that is a tough one. What ever you decide to do I hope the best for you and your tank.

[MarinaP]

My guess is that you have a BTA/RBTA. I have not seen a BTA recover from a condition that your are describing. I would remove it now. I am not sure how you can euthanize an anemone. They do not have a brain, afterall.

Originally posted by RockyMtnReef
The most humane to euthanize an aquatic animal is to place it in a bag of tank water and then put the sealed bag in the freezer.

According to Noga, one of the leading experts on fish diseases, acceptable methods of fish euthanasia are decapitation and pithing. He does not consider cooling/freezing to be a humane method.

[sfsuphysics]

yeah, its a bta type animal (never got the true species down, it was a strange one regardless). But I did have a BTA originally that suffered this same starving fate, I tried my best from putting silver sides directly into the anemone mouth and let him pull it in and still didn't work, either way I think its best to remove the anemone since I doubt he'll recover.

[phender]

Whether or not you toss the anemone right now is up to you. If you want to give it one more chance, I have had good luck using small pieces of scallop to get anemones to eat when they won't take anything else, even if their tentacles weren't sticky. They will slowly push out their stomach and take in the scallop if it is placed near their mouth.

[racrumrine]

I had a small white sebae that came with my 180 that I couldn't save. It shriveled up on me to about the size of a quarter. Eventually it fell off the rock and the hermits ate it within a few hours. There was no negative impact on the tank.

My RBTA started out great (although it was a bright pink color) and then went downhill so fast, I thought it was a goner. It wouldn't eat silversides because they wouldn't stick to the tentacles and it basically crammed itself into a rock (I thought to die).

To try to give it some nourisment, I feed it a mixture of frozen brine, mysis, and cyclop-eeze by gently squeezing a syringe near it's mouth everyday. It looked really bad for about 2 to 3 weeks at one point it's stomach was even hanging out.

However, I'm happy to report that now it's color is normal and it's totally fine and thriving.

Thus, based on my experience, if it shrivels up and dies (and it's not to big), let nature take it's course and give your cleanup crew something to work on.

If you can turn it around, like I did, you'll feel great that you gave it another chance.

Best of luck,

Roy