Carpet Anemone?

[bassman]

I need helping identifying this anemone. My wife brought it home as a surprise, she was told she was buying a toadstool leather, NOT! It looks like a carpet anemone to me.

If it is I am a little concerned as I already have a bubble tip anemone in my tank. Is there any chance they will co-exist in the same tank? It's a 55 gal. I will be upgrading to a 250 gal in the near future but probably not for a year.

And yes I have spoken to the wife about bringing "surprises" home. As much as I appreciate it this is the wrong hobby for impulse buying.

[Der_Iron_Chef]

Looks like a carpet to me. A detailed pic would make a more accurate ID possible.

[bassman]

Thanks, I will get another pic once the lights come on and it's opened up a bit more.

[Delphinus]

It's definitely a carpet. Actually it looks like it might be a really cool carpet. The colour looks pretty cool, is it as blue as it looks in the picture?

If you can manage a picture of the underside, or at least take a look at the underside, it will help to cinch an ID.

Based on what we can see already, this could be a Stichodactyla haddoni or Stichodactyla gigantea. I'm sort of leaning towards haddoni although it's showing characteristics of gigantea by perching up high on a rock like that and the oral disk folding like that (haddoni tends to settle near the rock/sand interface, and tends to lay flat). Although two things, first of all it's really small, which means it's juvenile, and haddoni juveniles tend to attach to rock up high at first, with the tendency toward moving toward the rock/sand interface when they get larger (in my experience it seemed to happen around when the anemone got to about 10".) The other thing to consider is that this guy is newly introduced to your tank and could just take a week or two to settle in.

As to looking at the underside, what we want to see is the verrucae. Verrucae are the little dots on the pedal disk sides that the anemone uses as holdfasts (sticky points that help attach to substrate) when the oral disk is spread out. Haddoni has verrucae that are subtle or even invisible (same colour as the pedal disk) and regularly shaped. Gigantea has irregularly shaped verrucae that are usually of a high contrasting colour (eg. purple) that are more dense at the top. There is another species of carpet, S. mertensii that has them as red dots uniformly dense from top to bottom.

Here's a picture of S. gigantea's verrucae. This is the underside of one my two gigantea carpets.
http://members.shaw.ca/hobiesailor/aquaria/anemones/20051010/carpet5.jpg

I don't have haddoni anymore (sold it, got too large - haddoni carpets can reach 24" in diameter :eek:) and I can't find any good pics I can link to. Offsite linking to RC is strictly verboten by RC so I can't show the image I want to show you here. But if you go to this thread:
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/printthread.php?threadid=201498&perpage=25&pagenumber=5

.. and then search on "Stichodactyla haddoni verrucae" you will see a picture by Gary Majchrzak that has a great example (actually the verrucae are a bit raised in the photo, they're not always that obvious, but if you see the picture you will see what I'm getting at).

For completeness, here's a picture of mertensii's verrucae:
http://www.wetwebmedia.com/Cnidarians/Anthozoans/AnemonePIX/Stichodactyla/Stichodactyla_mertensiiQLD.jpg


Couple of items to note. First, carpets can be kind of dicey the first few weeks. Due to stress incurred during collection/wholesale/retail and all the shipping in between, they come to us compromised - not all will survive. Those that do, tend to be very hardy and undemanding reef citizens. But "getting there" is not guaranteed, in fact, probably more of an exception than the actual rule. The other thing is that, if it's haddoni, once they start to get a bit bigger, they are known fish-eaters. (Just something to be mindful of.)

Anyhow sorry for the large brain dump but I hope some of this info is helpful.

[Pier Pressure]

You could be playing with chemical warfare. I had a bubble tip anemone and then made the mistake of adding a white sebae. It was not long before the bubble tip started losing size, and then next thing I knew he was gone! This happened within about three months of having both in the same tank.

[bassman]

Thanks so much for the info. The underside of mine is almost identical to the pic you provided. I was noticing all the cool stripes yesterday.

The anemone is not blue, I wish it were. It's more of a brown/green. It's already opened up a fair bit since acclimation. I fed it yesterday and it took the food immediately and did not puke it back up. The mouth looks good, it's not open or drooping so that is a good sign from what I have read.

I have always wanted a nice carpet anemone but I really like my bubble tip too. Should I be concerned? There does not appear to be any warfare at this time, both anemones seem fine. From what I have read pulsing xenias can be a good indicator of chemical warfare taking place and mine are all opening nicely and pulsing just as they did prior to adding the carpet anemone so hopefully everything is okay.

[Delphinus]

The chemical warfare thing - it's hard to say. I believe it to be a factor but it's not necessarily "all gloom and doom." Best thing to do is observe the anemones and see how they do over time.

One thing I noticed along the chemical warfare thing was along the lines of multiple BTA's competing with non-clonal BTA's. When I had 2 BTA's (1 of each) in the same tank, no problem. Then one split and it was 2 versus 1, again, no problem. But then one of the splits, split again, and now it was 3 versus 1, and the non-splitter was suddenly not opening up as much. I sold two of the splits, back down to 1 and 1, and the non-splitter opened up again normally. Whether I was just observing random things and interpreting it as a pattern, I can't really say, but I'm more careful to sell off splits nowadays just to be sure.

However, in the "normal" situation for me, I have 2 BTA's (non clones), and 2 gigantea carpets in the same tank. I don't really recommend this because I just don't know if "one day" this will become a problem, but it's been about 3 years like this now, so it's fair to say (I think) that sometimes they can coexist. Again, really sort of hard to predict what can happen, I think the best approach is to observe, and be prepared to do something should the need arise.

So, anyhow, sounds like you might have gigantea. That's really cool, they are definitely my favourite. :) Would love to see more photos when you have a chance. :cool:

[bassman]

The chemical warfare thing - it's hard to say. I believe it to be a factor but it's not necessarily "all gloom and doom." Best thing to do is observe the anemones and see how they do over time.

One thing I noticed along the chemical warfare thing was along the lines of multiple BTA's competing with non-clonal BTA's. When I had 2 BTA's (1 of each) in the same tank, no problem. Then one split and it was 2 versus 1, again, no problem. But then one of the splits, split again, and now it was 3 versus 1, and the non-splitter was suddenly not opening up as much. I sold two of the splits, back down to 1 and 1, and the non-splitter opened up again normally. Whether I was just observing random things and interpreting it as a pattern, I can't really say, but I'm more careful to sell off splits nowadays just to be sure.

However, in the "normal" situation for me, I have 2 BTA's (non clones), and 2 gigantea carpets in the same tank. I don't really recommend this because I just don't know if "one day" this will become a problem, but it's been about 3 years like this now, so it's fair to say (I think) that sometimes they can coexist. Again, really sort of hard to predict what can happen, I think the best approach is to observe, and be prepared to do something should the need arise.

So, anyhow, sounds like you might have gigantea. That's really cool, they are definitely my favourite. :) Would love to see more photos when you have a chance. :cool:

Awesome, thanks. I will keep a close eye on everything in my tank for abnormal behaviour and be prepared to act. Maybe this is a good reason to setup a second tank. LOL, I have one waiting and ready to go, I just need some more halides and the willingness to see my power bill go up yet again. LOL

My lights will coming on soon in my main tank so I will get some better pics and post them in a couple hours.

PS, what size is tank that you have multiple anemones in?

Attached a pic of the under side.

[Delphinus]

Gigantea for sure! :cool: That's awesome. Before I had one of these, I had to wait *4 years* for one to arrive in a Calgary store. There was a period of time from about late 1999 to early 2004 where I was checking ALL the stores every week (I'll try not to turn this into my usual "why is anything I'm looking for, hard to find" rant. :lol:). These guys are really my favourite, they are a very beautiful anemone (IMO). They are a natural symbiont for both ocellaris and percula. They don't grow as big as haddoni and they are not voracious eaters of fish (I feed mine mysis but they eat every piece of fish food I offer - right down to tiny things like Cyclops-eeze and crumbs of flake food. But I target feed them mysis, which seems to do well for them). In fact, I used to have a mandarin that would sleep at night right under the "canopy" of one of the carpets - no way would that have happened with a haddoni (haddoni's are sticky like super glue - they don't really go out of their way to catch fish, but if a fish stumbles into them, they won't easily let go - most fish end up being meals. Although haddoni's tend to come in a nice range of colours - not much beats a "fire engine red" haddoni :) ). The tentacles of gigantea tend to be longer, giving the anemone something of "shag carpet" look to them, and it's really cool watching the tentacles wiggle and vibrate (particularly at feeding time).

Anyhow, I say don't be too hard on your wife. Although not at all what it was sold to her as (so maybe a bit "boo" on the store - but not your wife!!) - this is something of a "holy grail" of carpets. :)

Ok, I realize I'm geeking out a bit. Sorry :redface:

Anyhow the one drawback to gigantea is the delicateness for the first couple of weeks. If you can "make it" to past a month, odds are pretty good that at that point, it's a bulletproof specimen that will weather just about anything. But if you do get to that point, you're in fairly rare company. Time and again I read about reefkeepers over at RC losing one of these during that transitionary period, people have asked me what's my secret, and unfortunately I think there isn't a secret. You either get lucky or you don't. Basically, use common sense and keep your water params in check, feed the anemone and hope for the best. I really do think that the problem lies in the upstream chain (collection/wholesale/shipping/etc.) and all we can do as retail consumers is hope we've gotten one that isn't too far gone by the time we get them.

From everything you've described so far, it sounds like you're off to a promising start. If anything, try to resist the urge to overfeed for the first week or two, but do offer it things like a little mysis every couple of days maybe, and it takes it down and keeps it down, then that's a good sign.

Mine are in a 40g frag tank, unfortunately I don't have many pictures because at 24x24x12 it is somewhat challenging to get good photos of. Here are some photos that I do have (not the most current though - I've gotten lazy on the tank photos). You can't see the BTA's in this shot but my one BTA is in the left back corner behind the brown carpet and the RBTA is in the right back corner behind the green carpet.

http://members.shaw.ca/hobiesailor/aquaria/anemones/2carpets4.jpg

You can just see the tips of my rose in the background of this one:
http://members.shaw.ca/hobiesailor/aquaria/anemones/twocarpets3.jpg

Apparently I need to get some photos showcasing the BTA's! Whoops! :redface:

[bassman]

Wow! Those are awesome pics! I can't wait to see mine that full.

It looks like the wife may have stumbled onto something good here! The best part? She paid $12.00 for it!!! So the price was right that is for sure. Sometimes un-educated pet store staff works for the good.

I will keep an eye on everything in the tank, not over feed the anemone and hope for the best. So far so good, it's looks happier and healthier every day!


Thanks for all your help, I really appreciate it. I will post some more pics as the days go by.

[Delphinus]

$12? :eek: Wow that's awesome.

I thought I had it good when I found my brown one for $20 - but Nate (I got it from Big Als when they were still around) said they just landed that cheaply. I was happy :)

Anyhow best of luck and yes please do continue sharing pictures! :)

[bassman]

So far so good.

It's been 12 days since acclimation and the anemone seems to be doing fine.

It has not moved from the spot I originally placed it in and opens up nicely everyday. It seemed to be larger every day at first but the growth has slowed a fair bit now.

I fed it a very small chunk of a silverside the day after acclimation. It took to the food right away and did not spit it back out later. I have fed it one more time since, 2 days ago. Same thing again, just a small chunk of a silverside. And just as last time it took the food right away and retained it.

It's hard to see the mouth clearly on a regular basis but it does appear to be just slightly open most of time with what looks like a little bubble coming out of the one side of the mouth. The bubble has a purple stripe running down the middle of it. Is this normal for this type of anemone? It almost looks like bait, the purple is very bright.

[Delphinus]

12 days is a pretty good run. You're almost out of the danger zone from a timetable perspective. (I hope I'm not jinxing this by saying it!!!!!)

The mouth sounds normal. All the ones I've ever seen have had that little purple thing. It's kinda cool isn't it? :) I can't remember but I don't think haddoni's have it at all (or at least, not all do), so that also is a sort of a "distinguishing feature."

I feed mine mysis (although really they eat anything I offer - flake food, cyclops-eeze of all things - you'd think it would be too small - but no they seem to have a vigourous feeding response to it).

I anxiously await a new picture :)

[bassman]

Thanks,

Yes that purple thing is cool. I like watching the extensions wave around in the current, it's very relaxing, almost hypnotic.

I will get some pics later today once it opens up more.

How often would you recommend feeding it for now? I feed my other anemone once a week.

[Delphinus]

I have clowns in mine, that hardly venture more than a couple inches from the anemones, so a lot of the food I try to offer the fish ends up getting eaten by the anemones. So I don't really "target feed" my carpets except for occasionally, but they are getting a little bit of food basically every day. If I didn't have the fish in there I would probably target feed at least once or twice a week, I reckon..

[bassman]

Thanks, pics coming soon....

[bassman]

He made it!, it's been 1 month, 2 days since acclimation. :-)

The anemone looks very healthy, to me anyways LOL. It still has not moved an inch from it's original placement. The mouth is never gaping, always closed up nice and tight and it seems to enjoy rolling it's folds around in the current.

I feed it frozen silversides every 7-10 days and it eats plenty of mysis fed to my other inhabitants every other day.

Will this type of anemone prefer to stay up high in the rock work or will it eventually move down to the sand bed?

Thanks

P.S. I have attached a pic from last week. It was the day after a feeding so it's not as full as it usually is.

[Delphinus]

Gorgeous. :)

Mine sit at the bottom of the rockwork, seems to me that's where they settled initially though, and that's where they've stayed for the most part. I know with haddoni's that juveniles prefer to be at the top of rock and move down to find sand as they grow larger, but I don't think it's the same story for gigantea. In fact mine never did bury their feet in sand, even when they were at the bottom of the rock in a tank with sand, they were still attached just slightly above the sand/rock interface.

So my guess is, likely the anemone will stay in that spot, unless maybe, once larger, it's not as suitable a fit in that spot. For the most part mine have never really moved much although there has been a few times they have shifted around slightly as they got larger.