What aneome should i get?

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I am planning on setting up a reef tank 78 g and I'd like an anenome. Don't worry I won't do anything stupid like put it in the tank before it is ready but I'd like to have some idea on what my longer term plans are while i'm still deciding on what setup I'll have.

I've heard that some anenomes are short lived in tanks and some are tricky so I'm looking for one that won't outgrow my tank and will be relatively forgiving to a newbie and I don't like the idea of dooming one of these beautiful creatures to an early death when it would have lived for many years in the wild.

What aneome should i get?
 
Sounds like a BTA (Entacmaea quadricolor) is right up your alley. They come in a lot of color morphs, so take your pick. What kind of lighting will you have?
 
so far i only have the tank. I'm trying to take my time deciding on the setup. I want to give it a bit of thought depending on the species i eventualy want to have etc. Probably I'll go with MH lighting. What do you think?
 
Should be fine. That would definitely broaden your choices, but for ease and versatility as far as clownfish hosting, you can't beat a BTA. It is up to you if you want to try anything more difficult. Personally, I would start from the bottom up in terms of difficulty.
 
Welcome to the boards!

I'm glad you're taking your time deciding how you want things. I agree with Amphiprion, the btas seem to be the most forgiving and the least demanding, but, they are still listed as difficult.

A good place to begin is with the Clown/ Anemone FAQ near the top of the forum. It gives a very good overview of the different hosting anemones you're most likely to come across. Once you have a few ideas, you can start researching specific anemones and asking specific questions.

As far as lighting, you have some choices. We went with MH because we felt it gave us more choices in stocking our tanks, the down side, the mh's can heat a tank so you have to have a way to cool it just enough to keep the temps consistent. It's not hard to do, it's just something to keep in mind.

Good luck!
 
The heat from MH could be a problem. I live in Portugal and it gets very hot in july and august. What's the best way to cool?
 
The cheapest way would be to vent the canopy and use a couple of fans. A chiller or evaporative cooler is a more expensive option.
 
We get quite a bit of heat here in the midwest too, and without cooling the canopy our tanks would get too hot too.

I don't know if store bought canopies are big enough for housing mh, we made our own canopy. We have some ventilation holes in the top and on one end. On the other end we have a simple computer fan built into the canopy. It blows across the top of the water and out the other side and top. The fan comes on each time the lights do. If that's your only worry, it's very easy to fix.

Good luck!
 
when you say a computer fan you mean the fan from a normal computer? how hot does your weather get?
 
It gets in the upper 90's (and higher) here. Combine that with extremely high humidity, 80% and higher (which reduces evaporation--not good in these instances) in the summer months. Also, cutting down on the heat emitted by pumps (use more efficient pumps) helps tremendously.
 
Our summers in Missouri usually have a couple weeks of extreme heat (over 100) and we, like Alabama fight humidity as well, which makes it feel even higher. Even with central air conditioning, it's still hot in the house and it shows in my tanks.

We usually have a few months of 90's (before/after the 100's) too.

Winter is frustrating me though. The light from the mh warms it up enough that I still need to run the fan, but my fan cools it off too much. My heater is almost useless, it doesn't help this situation, if I turn it up to keep the tank at 80 during the day, it gets too hot at night. So for now, the tank is 80 during lights out and 78.9 with lights on.
 
Forgot - the computer fans - yep, the ones from the computer that keep it from over heating. Another tip I got was using two fans. One on each end. One blows across the water, the other takes that air and pulls it out of the tank. This was instead of using holes on one end.
 
Thats cool my husband works with computers, always wanted me to take an interest lol! Do you find the setup noisy?

Thanks for all the advice. I have been worried about the heat factor.
 
I think my ballast is noisier than the fan, but it's also out on the floor, if it could be stored inside the tank it would muffle it some. I also have cheapo ballasts which could be why they're noisier :)
 
Depending on what brand PC fan you pick up, it can be basically noiseless. Antec is usually really quiet, and there are a bunch of other companies that make good, quiet running fans.

The thing to make sure of that would make it louder is restricting the air flow of the fan. For example, if you were to just drill a bunch of small holes for the fan to pull air through, the excess material in the way of the airflow will increase the sound of the air moving past it, whereas if you were to use a holesaw to cut out a hole matching the size of the fanblades and covered it with your standard wire fan cover it would be a lot quieter, and also more efficient.
Wire Fan Grill
There are tons of different brands and varieties of 80mm fan to choose from, including plenty of super-cool LED fans, which basically are useless for this particular application...though maybe blue would serve as makeshift moonlights? ;)
Huge listing of 80mm PC Fans

Another thing to think about, which I've honestly been wondering myself...is how are you wiring these fans in? They all have specialized cables designed to plug into the motherboard of a computer, and as far as I know can't handle the voltage straight from an outlet...so it would be really useful to get more information out there about how you're actually making this happen, 'cause I'm confused.
 
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