id request - fire, flower, branching anemone?

[coit]

Howdy,

OK, so, a while ago I got some zoas and misc corals from a tank shutdown, which have been in QT for almost a couple of months now.

The people shutting the tank down thought this was xenia (?!) and my water delivery guy pegged this as a fire anemone the other day.

So anyway, pictures -

Being that anemone IDs can be a matter of some debate even with fairly commonly collected clownfish hosters I'm really loathe to go from google image searches on what this might be.

Candidates seem to be a flower anemone, a branching anemone or a fire anemone, though I'm really not finding much as far as identifying characteristics goes between any of them or even reliably applied scientific (or even common ) names. Before anyone asks - I'm really not game to touch the thing and find out

It's on rocks in my tank and was on gritty substrate as well as rocks in the tank it was picked up from, and if it stung them they didn't mention it. I'm pretty sure at some point I may have come into direct skin contact with it, but apparently some people aren't affected by fire anemone stings in the first place. It has an extremely strong feeding response (entire tentacles move near instantly whip food into the mouth), and it's propagated at least twice without intervention.

Anyone? I can take more photos if it helps.

I'm also seeing a lot of pictures of anemone crabs and shrimps being hosted in similar looking anemones? Is there any clear guide to matching them along the lines of "Field Guide To Anemone Fishes And Their Host Sea Anemones" ? Assuming this thing isn't pure evil that could be a cool tank concept.

 

[shifty51008]

Looks like a chili coral. Not an anemone though

 

[coit]

Those aren't polyps, they're tentacles around a central mouth.

Here's a video of it eating -

http://youtu.be/oGsoEgZnW0Q

(forgive my ancient camera and the horror of my QT tank, go in with one thing, come out with GHA )

At least as far as I can google - actinodendron plumosum, megalactis griffithis, and megalactis hemprichii are the most similar, but only kinda sorta.

 

[Rippinfrags]

I believe you have an actinodendron plumosum- fire anemone.

 

[Sugar Magnolia]

I believe you have an actinodendron plumosum- fire anemone.

It sure does look like that. http://web.nhm.ku.edu/inverts/adorian/actinodendronidae.htm

Keep your hands off it. They pack a nasty sting!

 

[SDguy]

Quite attractive though!

 

[coit]

Yeah I was looking at that page earlier, it does seem quite close to some - there are photos I've seen identified as plumosum that look really close, and others that don't look like it at all and seem to have a totally different tentacle structure. Then you have stuff like Megalactis Griffithsi -

http://www.actiniaria.com/megalactis_griffithsi.php

or Megalactis Hemprichii -

http://www.poppe-images.com/?t=17&photoid=937850

which look really damn close but still maybe not quite the same thing, mainly from how the surrounds of the mouth look in many photos of those - may just be that mine are too small to really show off much. I've tried getting photos of the mouth, and the inner branches off the central tentacles always seem to cover the mouth up pretty well.