ID Confirmation-S. gig?

Breadman03

New Old School
Premium Member
I happened by a Petco almost an hour from my house on Tuesday and they had what was labeled as an S. gigantea in their...um...stellar tank system.

The nem was pretty badly bleached and there were a few pieces of black stuff near the mouth that I think was excrement. The mouth was tight, so I figured I'd take a look at it again today if it was still there.

When I got there, I noticed that it appeared to have a slight green shade to it and it had shifted position slightly so that i could see the verracue with some brown spots. I took the coloration as a positive change, assuming that it was due to being exposed to light after a long transport period.

I've had a BTA for about 6-8 months that appears to be doing well, so I decided to purchase the gig. No, I didn't quarantine it, but I am getting about 30 gallons of water ready and will be looking for some cipro in case I need to pull it from my DT and treat it. I figured that my stable DT would be better for it than a freshly set up QT. I also fed the nem a small cube of (thawed) frozen raw shrimp from the grocery store. I placed the shrimp on the nem and it stuck strongly, wrapped it up and moved it to its mouth, and consumed it within about 2 minutes. The nem returned to its normal, spread out state immediately after.

I believe that the Petco ID as an S. gig is correct and am just looking for your confirmation, as well as any advice that I might not know. I do stalk Minh's threads and posts on RC as he appears to be one of the experts , so I think I know what I need to know.

I keep my tank at about 81-83 degrees, 1.026 by refractometer, nitrates register at 10 with API. I'm running GFO and carbon in a reactor. I don't test for ammonia or nitrite because the tank is fully cycled and I only have 2 fish, 2 shrimp, and assorted snails and hermits, so it wouldn't take long for me to notice one missing.

The first 3, whiter pictures are from Tuesday at Petco. The rest are from my tank today.











 
It looks like an atlantic carpet anemone to me, though I am by no means an expert at all!
 
It is definitely an Atlantic (sun) carpet. Not a clownfish hosting species and has been known to eat clowns that try to use it as a host.
 
4th pic is the giveaway for me. Those organish brown verrucae are definitely that of S. helianthis.
 
Thanks for the help with the ID. It seems like these are generally incompatible with the intended direction of my tank. I would like a gig and a pair of percula clowns as the centerpiece, a couple clams, and generally peaceful fish. I suppose I will be selling this or trading it in somewhere.

Anybody local interested?


:hmm4: The horror. I can't imagine how ****ed (at myself mainly) if I trusted a pet store label and got one of my clown eaten.

Yeah. I thought it was a bleached gig due to the verracue. I just wasn't educated enough to tell the difference. I looked through the FAQ that is in the stickies and didn't see anything comparable, so I thought it was accurate. You live, you learn.
 
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Yeah. I thought it was a bleached gig due to the verracue. I just wasn't educated enough to tell the difference. I looked through the FAQ that is in the stickies and didn't see anything comparable, so I thought it was accurate. You live, you learn.

Gigantea usually have irregularly spaced blue or purple verrucae that don't run very far down the column. (The colored verrucae on severely stressed gigs will sometimes fade away.)
Merten's carpets usually have orange or magenta randomly spaced verrucae that run all the way down the column becoming red stripes by the time they get to the foot.
Heliantus carpets have brownish verrucae that run in relatively orderly rows on the underside of the anemone, but usually don't go all the way down to the foot.
Haddoni carpets normally don't have colored verrucae, but they can have blue spots on rare occasions.
Maxi-mini carpets usually have undersides very similar to merten's carpets, but the tentacles on the edge are very different and of course the size is also very different.
 


Sorry about the narrow view. I recorded it on my cell phone sideways so that it would fill the whole screen, but something happened to it during upload to YouTube.
 
A little update after about 2 weeks in my tank. The nem moved from on top of my rock to the side on the first night and has stayed there ever since. For the last week, it has been reaching closer to the rear of the tank and now touches the glass. It is quite sticky and eats a small piece of shrimp daily. It is developing more green coloration and I expect it to make a full recovery.







 
Do you want it to make a full recovery? Just kidding. Too bad their such notorious fish eaters. They don't look that bad.
 
It can't hurt to at least use it as a litmus test for when I can get the gig I wanted. I was real tempted to order one from LiveAquaria this week, but upcoming bills made me wait a bit longer.
 
Besides the verracue (dots underneath) tentacle length, and the fact that they don't eat fish is a large difference.. I actually picked one of these up from Petco last year thinking it was a gig, and promptly brought it back.

If you accept the risks and want to keep it, so be it, but if you're looking for a gig, this isn't it.
 
...and the fact that they don't eat fish is a large difference...

sorry to be contradictory, but they will eat fish. they are just not as likely to eat clown fish.

my gig just spit out the indigestible parts of the box fish it ate a couple of nights ago. the boxfish seemed ok the night before and was nowhere to be found the next morning.
 
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These actually look a lot different than gigs. Their overall stance is a lot more flat, and the tentacles are spread apart more. I've never seen one of these take on the "shag carpet" appearance of a gig.
 
I think that Giganteas are big fish eaters too just like Haddoni. Just that in the past there were just not that many Gigantea in captivity, thus less reported. Mine have ate several fish in the last year. Mandarin X2 in different tanks, Flame angel. All my fish was healthy too. None of these sick fish as cause of them been eaten.
 
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