Anonymous poll....

[WDLV]

149 views... 17 respondants....

C'mon guys that's a pretty weak response.

[traveller7]

Over almost 30 years, many more then 10.

Even today, I'll have BTAs wander off the rock pile, find the overflow, etc.

With all the BTAs I have sent out, it is more then a net gain.

A net loss in other species, but I am hopefull I can catch up with a species or two I am working on :)

[WDLV]

We don't live so far apart. If you have any you'd like to sell or trade, I'd like to know about it. Especially if yours are different than mine.
My clones have a greenish oral disc with orange/red tentacles. The columns are green with a red foot. Like this....


They usually don't get bigger than 6" oral disc before they split but they can get as big as 12".
Here's a size reference. That's about 5' of a 6' tank.

[traveller7]

I am focusing on a few pita species these days, almost completely down sized so not too many trade opportunities. Can set aside a clone at some point for you though to add some diversity to your collection.

Originally Posted by WDLV

We don't live so far apart. If you have any you'd like to sell or trade, I'd like to know about it. Especially if yours are different than mine.
My clones have a greenish oral disc with orange/red tentacles. The columns are green with a red foot.[/IMG]

All mine are pre-BTA rush of a few years back...say 6+ years old minimum. Most of mine, all orange(pink when nitrates are low), cream/white column. Take out a few every few months. Most are quite large, say 10"+:
http://reefcentral.com/gallery/data/...nths_later.jpg

I have a few of the old west coast purple base pink/red tentacles. I don't feed them much and they don't split as much in my breeders. Great genetics though so these would be the ones you want for long term, breeding, etc. You'll have to be really patient though :>)

[WDLV]

Ygpm

[traveller7]

Whoops....RC pictures not playing nice. Guess I need to take some new pictures and host them here :)

[mp9]

i lost one blue S. haddoni in 1984 or '85 - the nitrates were through the roof and my blue face angle picked at it from the start. lasted two days. didn't know any better.
since that time i haven't lost any but have yet to try a S. gigantea or H. mag.
i had two S. haddoni which were both sold back to the lfs after 1+ years. the first because the second was more colorful and the next because it ate many of my fish.
i had a H. crispa for over a year which i traded in for a RBTA.
kept the RBTA for about three years until i was able to sell all the clones as i grew to hate them.
currently have the sebae in my avatar for one and a half years, i'll get rid of it if it turns out to be H. malu or when i find a S. mertensii.

[WDLV]

Thanks for sharing that.
I don't mean to advise you with the following statement, but since you brought it up I thougght I'd put this out there for the benefit of others.
I think S. haddonis get a bit of a bad rap for being fish killers. Yes it is true that they do have particularly efficient capturing capabilities, but I think that most of the problems that we encounter with them can be avoided with the simple use of a night light or with the use of moon lighting. This can also help reduce the number of injuries and jumps due to light shock or disorientation. Fish in general tend to wander into and become anemone food (particularly true of S. haddoni) at night when they can't see where they are going.
Providing a night light will also help reduce injuries (like pop eye) to clowns such as A. polymnus that are particularly vunerable to light shock.
I now employ the use of covers on all my tanks to prevent jumping and use night lights to help reduce injury.

FWIW the last time my night light burned out, I lost my female latezonatus. That was the event that led me to start using egg crate or pond netting over all my tanks.

[Quickcord]

I have had my LTA for about 2 yrs. now. It was the first thing that I placed in my tank. (clean up crew notwithstanding) I did wait until I had everything needed to care for it and also waited 6-7 mos. for the tank to stabilize/mature a bit. Once the LTA picked it's spot and was happy, I picked up a GSM pair. So far everyone is happy.

Quickcord

[Pedro_Mann]

I have only ever lost one host anemone and it was due to the power being shut off of the place I moved out of. I moved the tank last because it was hardest and came back only to find out the power had been off in the middle of winter for 3 days and lost everything in the tank. Not really due to mis-care just bad luck.

I think the old myth that anemones are hard to care for was started back when the aquarium hobby didn't have that good of lights available. That is the #1 factor of keeping an anemone happy. That and research what it eats, feed it when needed, and keep the water parameters stable.

I think it is funny that most books still site a forum survey on compu-serve from the 90's. Back when compuserve was text based. WWW was an experiment at a university. No graphics, dialup, modems, games were in 16 colors. If the computer industry has evolved that far, then why can't the aquarium hobby shake off old misconceptions. With the equipment available now, we can create better than ocean conditions.

Take fish breeding for example. In nature a mated pair of clowns might only produce a half dozen successful offspring over their lifetime. The rest of the larvae starve or are eaten. In one clutch of eggs, we can produce as many clowns as would naturally be produced in an entire geographic area, over a breeding pairs useful liftetime.