BTA or not BTA is that a question?

[Delphinus]

Er yes I meant the presence (or absence) of verrucae can be used as a distinguishing feature between species. Sorry if I was unclear and misled you there. So um yeah. E quad does not have verrucae on the column.

Kind of getting into that whole "common name" versus "latin species name" thing. There are so many common names for things, one species may have several common names and several species may share the same common name. Indeed yes, why call E quad a BTA if it doesn't have bubble tips?? My guess is only because BTA is universally accepted as a common name for E quad, so if you say BTA you know it's an E quad.

BTW, there are two forms of E quad. I'm not sure if they're considered different subspecies or not. There is a deeper water version that tends to be larger and solitary in nature, and a shallower water version that tends to be smaller and clonal/colonial in nature.

Fautin and Allen have this to say about the bulb tentacles :

Each long tentacle usually with bulb at or somewhat below end; tip of tentacle red (rarely blue), equator of bulb white. Bulb seems to be related to presence of fish, and can disappear; tentacle lacking a bulb has white ring where equator would form. Tentacles without bulbs are blunt-ended.

Don't know if there are any newer theories. I know other theories are amount of lighting, something to do with feeding (either more feeding ... or less feeding depending on who you talk to) or perhaps it's just some unknown factor of living in captivity ... I'm not sure any of the theories aren't just educated guesses though.

BTW I think there was a poll on RC recently on this topic. I actually ended up not participating though, because my situation doesn't show up as one of the options. Mine is "do not have bulb tentacles (anymore or currently anyways), I do have high light and I do feed regularly, but I have no anemonefish with it." But, interesting thread nonetheless..
http://www.reefcentral.com/vbulletin...hreadid=117832

cheers