What you suggest just isn't practical for most hobbyist...a vast majority of the tanks being set up have no idea of what they will add. New hobbyist generally don't even consider this. I think we have to step out of our experiences a little more and look at things from a more holistic approach. In the case of a gigantea the more stable the tank the better. I don't know too many systems that are going to go 6 months with nothing but rock in anticipation of an anemone. This is the extreme exception rather than any rule. Its just not practical.
BTW, EC...you have enough light for a gigantea...perhaps more than enough light.
OP, get those gigs out of a qt and into permanent homes. QT will kill them.
No what I suggested in the last post
is not practical for most hobbyists but does help explain why they fail. If you don't know the destination, how do you plan to get there?
Quarrantine is not practical for most hobbyists but then neither is ripping one's whole system apart trying to catch and treat his fish because his new gigantea arrived to him after having been housed in a system with diseased fish.
'An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.'
Given info I've read in some of the great gigantea threads I've seen in the last couple months, I would agree that lighting should be started off being lower anyhow.
BTW, this isn't necessarily true either with bleached anemone. To color up it has to regain its zooxanthelle. A higher K bulb will bring out the color that is there but if bleached a higher K bulb is not optimal. If the anemone is drab in color, sure a higher K bulb could help, but not for bleaching.
I do not disagree... as I mentioned above, you want to get that blue spectrum WITHOUT sacrificing PAR. No one bulb on the market does this. It's a balancing act. I think the best way to do this is to suppliment. One way might be 6.5KK with actinic VHO/PCF/T-5.
Also fairly new to the market is a reflector that can house two DE bulbs at once. One could put a 6.5KK bulb and a 20KK bulb in that housing to create a situation where he could maximize PAR and blue/violet spectrum.
I don't necessarily think this should be done during quarrantine. Given that he's using T-5 on his quarrantine I imagine the DT will be pretty good in terms of lighting. That quarrantine system is equal to or better than many of the hobbyists' display systems out there.
I do think that the OP is doing the best he can do and doing it in the most responsible way possible but with a sensitive species like S. gigantea it will be a craps shoot no matter what method you employ. If there are no fish in the system (which is clearly not the case) there is no reason that the filtration he listed should not suffice for the duration of quarrantine. In other words they should be quarrantined separately.
