Meet Compliance the Carpet

[Rosseau]

I believe Compliance is a Stichodactyla Gigantea

I've had him for about two weeks in my relatively young tank. He's become the centre piece of this tank and I'll do all I can to keep him happy.

He spent several days roaming (not far) and appears to have settled down. He's under 96W of T5 in a 17" deep tank... I hope it's enough.

Responsive to light and food... for now the diet consists of mysis and grocery-store mussels... Currently I'm looking into more nutritious food. Any suggestions?

Thanks for looking, comments etc. is quite welcome.

 

[tufacody]

Beautiful. Looks like gigantea indeed. From what I have read your lighting is borderline. Did you get it local?

 

[NCSUsalt]

well fed carpets grow fairly rapidly, you are going to have to move him from that small tank fairly soon

 

[Rosseau]

Yes I got the anemone near Toronto.



At the store he looked much smaller than this.... I guess he wasn't fully stretched out. I am a little worried about his size... upgrading isn't too big of a problem at least.


Let's say that my lights are marginal, and the anemone isn't getting all the light that it needs... would the anemone show signs of decline over a long period, or would the decline be rapid? I have several hundred watts of MH lighting kicking around if I need to... I'd just like to give the T5's a go.

 

[E.J. Coral]

That is probably not enough light. It is definetley not enough room for a gigantea. Get ready for some upgrades if it survives.

 

[Rosseau]

What about if I switched up to 4 x daylight bulbs...?

FWIW this anemone spent over a month in an LFS with the same amount of light and is looking quite healthy today, 6-7 weeks later.

 

[Tyler.L]

what lfs you get that in t dot. Things gorgeous....ship it to me lol....

 

[phender]

If it is otherwise healthy, a gigantea will take months to start to decline from just inadequate light. Disease with take your anemone quickly. Starvation/malnutrition take a while.

It may look quite healthy to you, but gaps between the tentacles and the shape of the tentacles tell me that it is barely getting by. Feeding it small amounts everyday will help, there is no substitute for the nutrition it gets from its zooxanthellae, which need more light than what you currently have.

A 150 watt 10 or 14K Metal halide would be much better as long as you can keep the water temp below 82 F.

These pics are from an experiment I did to see if I could keep a gigantea under lights good enough for BTAs and haddoni carpets by feeding it more often.

This is a carpet (about the same size as yours) with healthy tentacles, but a little bleached.

This is the same carpet six months later after being under low light (10" below 130 watts of CF lights) but being fed 5 times a week. Notice the gaps between the stubbier tentacles. Looks a little worse than yours but not much. Most people would have thought it was very healthy.

Again the same carpet 2 weeks later after being moved about 8" below a 150 watt 10K de MH bulb. Note the longer tentacles with no real gap between them. This tank also has gentle alternating current.

The same carpet six months later, under the same conditions as before. The anemone is almost double the size of the first pics and was only target feed once every two weeks or so, relying mostly on the amount of food it could catch that was meant for the fish and its zooxanthellae. For size comparison the perc is a breeding female and is about as big as any perc you will ever see, over 3". Notice there aren't any places where you can see the oral disk and it really looks like shag carpet.

Point being, it will slowly decline under your current set-up, but you may not notice until it is too late to save it. Get the better lights and bigger tank asap.

 

[Rosseau]

Phil,

Thanks a lot for the information. It's quite useful to me. Particularly the idea of a slow decline rather than an immediate showing of an inadequate environment.

I've got a few options here...

-continue with my current lighting and feed as much as possible while monitoring the "health" of the anemone as best as I can... perhaps, my lighting is adequate... (shallow tank)
-a safer bet would be to upgrade my lighting ASAP ... I was under the impression that these lights were sufficient... marginal at worst.

I've got a SE 175 MH, 2 x 70W DE HQI MH and about 50 more watts of HO T5's....... I also, could just get myself a nice little 250 MH and never look back.

I wanted to see what T5 could do for me. MH worked fine in the past, but they were energy pigs...

Anyways, thanks for the info. For now I'll keep reading around. Any more advice is very much welcome.

 

[Rosseau]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13276916#post13276916 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Tyler.L
what lfs you get that in t dot. Things gorgeous....ship it to me lol....

http://oakvillereefgallery.com/

There might be one left! I took the second last.

 

[phender]

I am a big fan of T5s myself and use them over my sps reef tank. I use 150 watt de MH bulbs over my high light anemone tank (gigantea and H. magnifica). I use CF bulbs over my lower light anemone tanks (BTAs and haddoni carpets).

I don't know how many T5s equal one MH etc, all I know is what giganteas need in comparison to other anemones and corals.

Here is my general rule of thumb for giganteas. Would you put a blue acropora on the bottom of that tank and expect it to thrive and stay blue? If not, then you don't have enough light for a gigantea carpet.