Our anemone is a very healthy Saddle Carpet Anemone (
Stichodactyla haddoni) that was purchased (rescued?) as a
bleached and dying specimen from a local
LFS, which had 2 of them. After purchasing it we had to feed it every day for a month before we could even tell what color it was. I was hoping for blue but it's a typical green specimen with a pink mouth.
Since I doubt it gets much from our 2x65w power compacts at the bottom of the 75g tank we feed it 2 or 3 finely chopped up silversides (soaked in Selco or Selcon depending on that month's budget) every 2 days plus it receives a small number of live amphipods and mysis shrimp from the upstream
fuge that flows into the tank above the anemone. The host saddleback clown helps out with feeding now, which is cool because we don't have to lift the lid anymore. We just drop a chunk of silverside into the water and the clown swims out, grabs it, brings it back, and sticks it on the anemone. Very fun to watch.
Other things it may have eaten:
no fish (yet!) but possibly a peppermint shrimp and perhaps a pom pom crab, haven't seen either of them for a while ... ever wonder if moonlights were worth adding to your tank? If you have a big anemone I'd recommend keeping a moonlight shining near it for a few hours each night so your night crew tankmates can more easily see it.
We really need to put this thing and it's host saddleback clown in a dedicated tank soon or we're going to be minus 1 large (and quite stupid) lyretail anthia Real Soon Now(tm). While these anemones are notorious fish eaters, the anthia is the only one I'm actually worried about. She is particularly brazen about how far she can go with regards to taunting and pestering the host clown - and that clown is big enough now that she could easily grab a fin or tail and drag the anthia down an inch or two to stick on the anemone. Our tank is a 75 so it isn't very deep, I don't think anthias and carpet anemones exist very close to each other in the wild.
Interesting story: A few weeks after we got the anemone, I was back at the same store for something when I actually heard an employee refer to the second one (which was looking even worse than before) as a "rare albino bubble tip" while trying to pawn it off on an unsuspecting customer who had a 20g tank and 1 clownfish ... needless to say, I went ballistic and probably got her fired. I think the fault was totally on the clerk so I won't say the name of the
LFS chain... it is a large franchise... owned by a Big guy... and I think his name is Al.
