Blue gigantea

[taylor t]

Here's a few pics of my blue gigantea. I enjoy seeing pics of others, so I guess it's my turn to share. I bought this one from Reef Hot Spot. I wasn't happy at first, but now I'm very happy. I've had several bad experiences with shipped anemone's, all from online stores with guarentees. I thought, maybe I'll try one from a place that doesn't guarentee them and have better luck. I took an expensive gamble, not knowing RHS has a good rep. Thanks Max.

I received it on 5-24-08. How long until I'm "out of the woods"?

I kept my MH lights off for maybe 2 weeks, using only PC, and I still shaded it. Everything in my tank started going downhill, so I started with an hour of MH after that, slowly increasing the time. I kept the giganea under a big square of cardboard so it would only get the "reflected" light in the tank. It reacted bad with high flow, so I've got 2 mini korillia's on a timer - 1 minute on/off. It's pretty low flow, I know, but it's happy right now. I will be upping it in the future, just not yet. I feed it a couple silversides every day, along with rods food. There was an anemone crab living in my haddoni. The day after the gigantea was introduced, it moved to the gigantea. It's since been "relocated" by Rod and Matt (the clowns) to the back side, and refuses to leave.

Day 1

The next day.

A few days later.

A week after I've had it.

Almost 3 weeks.

Almost 4 weeks.

Almost 5 weeks.

Yesterday.

Today.

This one has only shrank 3 times, during the 1st 5 days. Otherwise it's always full, and the normal 1/2 size deflation at night. It's tentacles were almost motionless when I got it, now most of them are "vibrating" all the time. I didn't realize how bleached it was when I first got it. One other oops happened 4 days ago. I spilled some coral builder in the tank, sending it everywhere, on everything. DON'T DO THAT! All these years I've never done that, I had to do it with a carpet under it! It seems to have managed o.k. so far.
One more thing, I changed 20% of the water during week 2. It didn't like it. I haven't changed water since. Everything seems to like the stability better. I have a calcium reactor and top off with kalk, so I'll keep an eye on stuff and see. My levels are all perfect right now. Even Nitrates are at 0, or undetectable. I have alot of live rock though.

I'm sure I've offended someone somewhere with something I've written. My tank maintenance changes once in a while. So, in advance, I'm sorry, and I appologize. Thought I'd share a few of my pics.

 

[elegance coral]

Beautiful anemone, and great job! How long do you plan on keeping it under subdued lighting?

 

[taylor t]

Thanks. It's under 9 hours of full MH now. It's been at full light for maybe 2 weeks now. I played with the lights everyday for about a month.

 

[hansonfam]

Looking really good

I am glad to know that mine is not the only one that HATES high flow..lol
As soon as i up the flow the mouth gapes.
So apparently no high flow for him yet.

Lisa

 

[NanoReefWanabe]

very nice congrats....but i liked the colour in the first couple pics better...LOL

 

[a4twenty]

looks great

which clown is the female rod or matt ???? :lol:

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=12886822#post12886822 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by NanoReefWanabe
.....but i liked the colour in the first couple pics better...LOL

seriously??

he looked bleached and gets worse till ~week 4, now you can see the zooxanthellae starting to repopulate.

 

[taylor t]

I'm guessing the reason it looks good in the first few pics, besides my high quality camera and professional shooting skills (kidding ofcourse, it's a camera more rugged than quality, for waterparks/waterproof), is because of the blue pc lighting the first few pics. The 10K MH show a more accurate color (to me in person). The tentacles have gotten much longer and wigglier. In person, it looks much better now than before, but I see what you mean. The last pic shows how it opens the mouth before I feed. After food, it closes a little more. It "regurgitates" about 6 hours after it eats. Fish go in, tin foil looking ball comes out (the shiny scales), so it is digesting a bit.

Originally I bought 4 baby clowns from Rod when they were tiny. He didn't want to sell them to me, but he did. 3 disappeared, I'm guessing my shrimp took them from their host at night, or their host had a midnight snack. I should have waited. I planned on giving a pair to a friend when they got bigger, but that never panned out. They were maybe 1/4 inch long. They started hosting in a LTA, then I moved the last remaining guy to this tank, where she hosted in an anemone, I bought labeled "milk" anemone from LFS. They had no interest in hosting a haddoni. They found the gigantea pretty quick, and haven't left it since.
So I saw in another forum a Matt's onyx for sale, and thought it would be a nice mix. The larger one is the Rods clown. It got black at a young age. The funny thing, they were both the same age, maybe a couple weeks difference, if that. There was a big size difference between the two, only being a couple weeks difference. These 2 "hooked up", I want to say, maybe 60-75 days old.? I can't remember, they were just small. I think they were born in sept? They didn't get along well at first, but now they're "buds". Matt's still isn't too black and seems slow to develop. They are both over an inch long, Rods is about 1 1/4 long now, so my fear of a ride "over the falls" is over, which happened to Matt. Found him in the filter sock the next day.
The carpet is bluer/browner in person, the pics don't really show it well.

 

[Reeferdude2]

Very Nice! I had a purple one that I traded about a year ago.In the last 3 weeks I have seen a Blue one and Yellow.I am looking to get a red one now when I find the right one.

 

[delphinus]

The growth rate is impressive. Honestly I'd say you're out of the woods - and it has nothing to do with it being 5 or 6 weeks, but judging by the impressive progression of size in each subsequent photo. How large is it now?

 

[taylor t]

It's changed it's size from when I first got it, it was 8-10 inches during the day, now it's about 8-10 at night, 12-14 inches in the day. It's interesting the shapes it takes. Some days it's a horizontal fluffy pillow with more folds, other times it's flat and open like a dinner plate, spreading more vertical up the rocks, which are the pics I tried to post to show the mouth as much as possible. The mouth changes, it seems it's food related...? It responds very well to food every time. The tentacles go crazy when it eats. I was looking at it last night thinking It may be ready for a more horizontal location, more directly under a light. Right now it's right inbetween a 10K and a 20K lamp. The 20K lamp puts out about less than half the par, according to the cheap little meter I've got. I always mess with the flow too, changing angles and intensities maybe every few days.
Delphinus - thanks - I'm glad you think I'm "out of the woods", because I was thinking the same thing, just in the feeding response and the improvement on tentacle vibration and ruffle movement. I know there's still a ways until full recovery. It just seems like a long recovery road because it seemed to have lost color the first couple weeks a had it. Now it's gaining, but still isn't as blue/brown as I think it should be.
It may be possible, the crab had something to do with helping it along, the first couple weeks, before the clowns made it move to the back side. The response the anemone gave, with all the poking the crab gave it walking made the anemone move quite a bit, which I'm not sure it would have moved like that, had it not been for a pointed crab (legs) walking on it. Which, may have helped in the water movement through the animal. It is clear in some spots, and I can see right in to the "chambers". The crab would try picking food out of the mouth, which made me mad because it would steal the food. Wouldn't it be cool if all these things needed was to have a crab shipped with them, to provoke them to move in the bag, to have a more successful shipping survival rate? I'm sure someone's tried it though.

 

[Jovreefer]

I love the porcelin crab in pic 3, lol it looks like just a head and claws.

 

[DesigDiver]

beautiful anemone..

 

[taylor t]

Update.

I removed a few korillia's for cleaning, and neglected (forgot) to put them back. At the same time I fed it about 5 silversides at once. BAD IDEA. I guess that's where trouble started...

I thought I lost it about 2 weeks ago, a few days after the last pic above. You can see the mouth starting to gape, and a few days after that pic, the center/disk/body area turned SOLID milk white, and it stopped eating. I figured it a gonner, and BLASTED it with flow, forcing it to inflate with a powerhead on/off every other minute. Curlie Q's (bad guts) were exposed from inside the mouth with the blasts. I figured if it's gonna die anyways, may as well kill it with flow. It looked bad for about 3-4 days. It lost it's stickiness. Tentacles shrank to new arrival size (first pics). I feared the worst. I also decided now was the time to give it more light, it's had more than enough time to acclimate. If it couldn't handle it, then I'd chaulk it's death up to human error/my stupidity, not light shock. I have a light meter and measured the highest point of light (it was always vertical, receiving unequal light) at 80 on the bottom, and 160 at the top. So I relocated it to the top of the tank, so the whole anemone got 180-200 (equally distributed across the animal), and blasted it with flow. I thought that's enough of an increase, without the light shock.

It recovered. I don't know why. It's gained alot of color the last couple weeks, and started eating again. I'm done sweating, for now. It took about a week to start to turn around. I can't believe it made it, it looked soooo bad. I should have taken pics of my/it's meltdown, but I thought everyday, "I'll take it out in a little bit".... "just a couple more hours and I'll take it out...." I'm glad I didn't chuck it! I kept looking for it to "smoke" (melt).

To sum it up: I almost lost it/almost chucked it, relocated it, continued to mess with the flow, it's eating and looking better now than it has so far. It's gone from a 14 inch flat dinner plate on the side, to a 10 inch folded cookie monster flopping in the breeze ontop of a big rock. It stays inflated all the time again. I know it's digesting, it takes about 8 hours to send eaten food back out, a couple hours longer than before, but atleast it's eating! Enough rambling. Here's a pic from the last 4 days, 1 each day.

Eating again

Night time with flash

A few minutes after MH turn on yesterday

5 minutes ago (8 weeks last sat)

The mouth has gotten quite yellow/tan. It's much better than it was a couple weeks ago, when it was milk white. I can see the lines returning on the mouth/disk area and it's going from the milk color, to transparent/tan again. I'm pretty sure it's the flow blast that stopped it from turning to a mush ball, but I can't say for sure. After blasting it a few days, it started to walk away, that's when I figured it's getting better, not worse, because it was seeking more mild flow again. It's gotten very blue now. Responds well to food again, only 1/2 of a silverside at a time from now on. Thanks for reading.

 

[delphinus]

The colour difference is really noticeable..

Sorry if I missed the info but what are the halides you're using?

 

[adtravels]

really well done a pat on the back for you keep us updated.

 

[taylor t]

The fixture I'm currently using is the outer orbit (2) DE 175 watt and (2) 130 watt compact flour. I've got all the colors, but I'm currently using (1) 10K MH and (1) 14K MH with a combo PC color of 10K/460 actinic. It's hanging over the tank about 6 inches above the water surface, and the anemone is about 6-8 inches below the surface. I like the color of the 10K to show true color to my eyes, but it's under the 14K right now because it's 1/2 par power of the 10K. I've got the other 1/2 as a 10K because my other anemone needed more light - it's on the bottom. Eventually it will get a 10K as well, so the whole tank is the same color.

It's in a 75 gallon. I've got 2 75's tied together, different rooms, 200+ gallons of water.

I didn't post any of this for a pat on the back (thanks anyways), but I've searched for progressive accounts of gigantea, from arrival, to "happy dwelling", and haven't found too many things, other than a "here's mine I've had for 5 years" or a "just got it", which are both cool to find (WITH PICS), but I've looked for a progression of how it acclimated under what conditions, how it transformed, "bumps in the road", how they were dealt with, and can't find much. So, here's mine.

 

[adtravels]

acutally for once I was not being sarcastic, I too have done similair searches and not found much I suppose gary's being the best but he cheated and got his from a reefer

 

[taylor t]

Good news, and bad news.

Bad news, I've gotten back my green haddoni, that I gave to a friend. Didn't quite settle in the new place, so I've got it back. Put it right where it was before, it opened up, and hasn't skipped a beat, just a little less color for being gone for a month or more. Almost like it "remembered" it's old home. Oh, well, better luck next time...

Good news, it's been 3 months now for the gigantea. I thought I needed a few pics to finish this thread for good. Not much has changed the past month as far as color. I'd say it took 2 months to get full color back. It still eats good. I went back to 14K lights, it responded poorly with 10K. (Correction, 150 watt bulbs, not 175 as stated above).

Today with flash

Today with no flash

 

[Titus77]

What is that wire to the right of the nem?

 

[taylor t]

I plug it in to get the tentacles to move.

Just kidding. That's for a korillia I've got aimed at the back side of it's foot pointing up at the foot. I'm trying to make it walk up the rock closer to the center of the rock it's on so I can spin it and face it the way I want it. I'm only willing to turn it on if I'm right there. Only moved about an inch so far, but hasn't been on very much either. I should have removed it for the pics - I kinda thought someone would ask. Sorry guys.