Carpet Anemone?

bassman · #1 02-04-2008, 03:50 PM

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 · #2 02-04-2008, 03:55 PM

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

bassman · #3 02-04-2008, 04:00 PM

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

Delphinus · #4 02-04-2008, 04:23 PM

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.

I don't have haddoni anymore (sold it, got too large - haddoni carpets can reach 24" in diameter

) 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/pr...5&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/Cnidarian...rtensiiQLD.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 · #5 02-04-2008, 04:39 PM

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 · #6 02-04-2008, 04:39 PM

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 · #7 02-04-2008, 04:59 PM

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.

bassman · #8 02-04-2008, 05:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 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.

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.