Nice carpet, looks good

It came from Big Al's. It came in on a shipment from about a week and a bit ago. I resisted as long as I could (about a whole day, just ask Nate). It has only been in my tank for a couple of days so it is a little touch and go, still at the moment, but it was looking pretty good yesterday so I thought I'd try a few pics. The colour came through nice on this one.

PC light would equal death for carpet anemones. The need strong lighting.

Very cool, how long are the tentacles?

is that one going to eat fish?

Steve

great question

Tentacles are about maybe 5mm in length at the moment.

I'm not 100% certain of the ID but I'm thinking it could be S. gigantea. I'm basing my guess on a couple factors. First, it came in on an order with about 4 or 5 other carpets which were very clearly S. gigantea but brown. It doesn't tend to lay flat like S. haddoni instead being all folded up. It's verrucae on the pedal disk are purplish. It hasn't buried its foot into the sand but it attached to rock above the sand. But, I could be wrong. I think its ID will become more obvious if it grows a little (it's very small at the moment, even if laid out flat it would barely cover a 6" diameter, but bunched and folded up it's more like 4").

So anyhow if it's gigantea the answer to the "will it eat fish" is "I don't know." If it is haddoni then the likelihood is definitely there. My other tank has a gigantea carpet (see picture here), it has not taken down any fish, in fact my mandarin would sleep right underneath it (was very unsettling the first few times I saw that, but, they made peaceable if strange bedfellows).

It is fairly sticky but not quite as much so as the haddoni I used to keep (now in Golden_69's tank). :biggrin:

A few pics from a couple days ago. I was trying to play around with the Photoshop settings and the end result makes it look a little unnatural. My photoshop skillsz are second only to my tank photography skillz! (Word.)

Anyhow just wanted to show the progression. Tentacles are now 10-15mm in length, and the anemone maybe now about 8" across, eating and accepting mysis and even the occasional flake food.

http://members.shaw.ca/hobiesailor/a...es/carpet1.jpg
http://members.shaw.ca/hobiesailor/a...es/carpet2.jpg
http://members.shaw.ca/hobiesailor/a...et-closeup.jpg