Anemone tips/advice

[ThatDarnDragon]

My parents bought me an anemone (without my knowedge...) its pale pink with deeper shade of pink tips. They also bought a tomatoe clown to host.

Now, I dont know as much as I should to care for one, any tips?

Right now, its placed far from the heater and filter, far from my featherdusters and shrimp's territory, since I know they can be agressive.

What should I feed it? regular liquid food or brine shrimp?

I do have the UV light, so I dont have worries about lighting.


PS. You'll be glad to know I have about 12 lbs of liverock/crushed corals in my tank now.

 

[Navarre]

Sounds like a possible Malu Anemone? If so then its one of the hardest to keep healthy )

You may have it placed far from everything at the moment but if its not happy whereit is it will simply move to whereever it wants to go. This means your corals and tube worms are liekly to be in its way as they cant "walk".

A UV light is not the type of light needed to keep an anemone. Totally the wrong colour temperature as this is high ultra violet whereas the anemone needs as close to 6.5k yellow light.

There also is no guarentee that it will host the tomatoe clown. In fact if the anemone is the wrong type it will just as easily eat the tomatoe rather than let it host in it.

Anemones can also get killed easily with heaters and powerheads. Heater remain swithced off for lng periods of time, an anemons can easily move over a heater whilst its off but once the heater turns on it cannot get off and thus gets cooked! A similar problem with powerhead... they can easily get sucked into the powerhead and die.

As i have said many times, anemones are not recomended for reef tanks, they eat fish, move around and sting all in their path and wont live long (considering in the wild this creature will be around long after your great great great great grand children have passed on )

Some people keep them and they are well behaved, Ihave one that crawled out of some liverock as a tiny polyp but i would never purchase one nor would i even entertain one just to host for a clown,. As mentioned before a better option for clown is the Sarcophyton as it needs weaker lights and doesnt sting or move around... Oh and it doesnt eat your fish!

You mention you have UV lights? Im assuming you mean an actinic? a UV light is usually used for strilisation andnot lighting a tank as the UV radiation will kill everything. It might just be a US terminology that im not familiar with of course but in either case this lighitng is not good enough for an anemone.

Lastly.. should the anemone settle down in your tank, be prepared forit to grow very fast. after all its simply a bag of water and can double or even treble its size in only a matter of weeks should it try to expand. If you have weak lighting then it will try to maximise this by growing large to gainas much from the lights as possible. this means less swimming room for your other fish

Im really sorry and please do not take offense when isay this but it will really helpyou and your tank if you have a quiet word in your parents ears and ask themto either research their purchases very very carefully or ask you in advance before buying. One of these days you might find they get something that is really going to be very dangerous for your tank (Oh look that lovely green mantis looks so cute! )

I hope it works out well for you.

 

[ThatDarnDragon]

the anemone I have is "Haitian Reef Anemone"- looked in liveaquaria.com. it didnt tell me much on them

if that makes a difference ;

looks like this:

Thanks foryour input nav, but how and what do I feed it?

 

[Navarre]

OK its a condylactus Anemone. These dont host tomatoes.. in fact they dont host anything.. I had one before i knew better and it did eventually host my maroon clown (but it still kept swimming back to its leather mushroom) (in fact maroons are the onlyi have known to host in them and this is rare).

I got rid of my Anemone when it grew to over 9 inches across withing 4 weeks! It also ate my copperband butterfly and the day before returning it to the shop it also ate my Collair butterfly

This was my green Condylactus. As you can see it was quite large. It grew this size in about 4 weeks and was only a quarter of the size when i first got it. My collair and Copperband can be seen swimming in this tank and it easily ate both of them. My Maroon clown would "Time share" between the leather mushroom and and anemone. It also roamed all over the tank before finally settling here. Their sting is really nasty too! not much escapes them if they sting it. )

I would feed it only 1 per week. maybe even 1 per 2 weeks. I fed mine on frozen cockle but with hindsight i would probably not have fed it at all as it caught food in the water colum at feeding time anyway.


The 1 positive note is that these anemones are among the hardiest of them all (not a malu ) but they still require very good lighting.

 

[Navarre]

The Haitian Reef Anemone requires strong light and should never be purchased if a good lighting system is not in place. It will do well in an aquarium with live rock and several crustaceans. Although an Anemone requires a reef environment, it is not the best suited for the reef aquarium. The Haitian Reef Anemone moves around the tank and has a sting that can inflict grave damage to other anemones and corals. Do not include its natural predators such as the Red-Leg Hermit Crab. Unlike other anemones, the Haitian Reef Anemone does not have a relationship with any particular fish, and it is rare for any type of clownfish or damsel to reside within them.

 

[ThatDarnDragon]

thats exactly what I ready, and the main reason why i returned it.

I exhanged the anemone for a metallic green mushroom.

That I had was an atlantic anemone, and does not host clowns.
pacific hosts clowns.

right?

 

[Navarre]

Mine was an atlantic green and it did host the maroon but its very rare and i have only hear dof maroons accepting them.