What is It.

[barry c]

Hi EmilyB,

i bought a green tree that had a few zoos attached to it that are simular to your picture. on the rock there were 3 of these little critters. we tried an extensive search and spoke to Anthony Calfo on them. while i can't find the correspondence with him about them, i can give you my experience with them.

Anthony identified them as a type of anemone. they don't get much bigger than in your picture. they readily take any type of food and split like an anemone. they will also release their hold on the rockand float around and resettle in different spots around your tank. in about 3 months after feeding them once a day i had about a dozen of them. i stopped directly feeding them at this time. about a month later, i noticed the tank wasn't looking up to par and the critters had grown to about 20 in numbers. after some water changes i still wasn't sure why my tank was looking so poor. well, we peeled the little anemones of the rocks and got rid of them. after a couple of weeks the tank started to look better. and after some more water changes and a few more weeks, the tank was back to normal. This is in a 50 gallon tank with a DSB and about 40lbs of live rock.

now, i'm no expert, but i think that with the amount of anemones that i had, they were releasing toxins and causing the problems i was having with the rest of my corals.

on the other hand, i gave Flame*Angel one six or seven months ago, and it has only split twice in her 120 gallon without any direct feeding.

Later
Barry