Pacific Long Tentacled Anemone

Now that you've seen the Atlantic Anemone in all of its glory, here's a relative from around the world.

I purchased this one because a clown fish had set up housekeeping inside it. This is not unusual: in fact, it is somewhat classic. I think you will agree, however, that no matter how stereotypical it is, the two still are cute!

Here it is just after I placed it in my tank. I had put the Atlantic Anemone at the peak of a rock, and it seemed to be quite happy, so I put the Pacific Anemone on a different rock. After it fell down a few times, I walked off muttering. When I returned, it had happily burrowed into the sand, where it has remained ever since.

Notice the bright red foot in the initial pictures: I purchased it in part because of that foot, figuring I would be able to see the foot as I can with the Atlantic. I've not seen it since the first day, now that it is buried in the sand.

Also notice, in the third picture, the ring of white sand around the anemone: this is the sand it pushed out as it dug itself in!

After the Pacific Anemone settled down, it became quite huge. Whereas the Atlantic Anemone's top surface only gets to be about 1.5-2 inches across (if you ignore the tentacles), the Pacific is easily 6 inches across. Here it is all spread out, from above. Notice that each tentacle is tipped with a dot of white.

As you can see, the Clown Fish wriggles around in the middle of the anemone:

Every so often, the anemone lifts its skirts, for no apparent reason. You can clearly see that there is a margin of perhaps 1-2 inches beyond the foot which the anemone places over the sand around it.

Here is a closeup of the striations on the underside of the "skirt":

This time, the "skirt" lifted up on more than one side: you can see the cavity around the foot:

I use two kinds of lights in my tank: fluorescent and metal halide. The former runs 12 hours/day (on a timer) and the latter 2 hours/day (at the moment: going up to 4-6 hr/day eventually). The metal halide lights are not only bright, but very blue, almost ultraviolet. The Pacific Anemone glows an eerie pastel blue under the metal halide lights. Some of the other anemones which I have seen at the store also glow as if lit from within. Unfortunately, this camera is unable to really show that effect clearly.

Well, that's probably enough for now.

Still to come: the Clown Fish closeups; the Button Coral; the Sally Light Foot Crab; the Banded Coral Shrimp; the Blue Spotted Goby; and the Snails...

Late breaking story. Just after dinner one night, we wandered over to see the following!

The entire skirt had disappeared, to the point where just the foot (and a bit of a hole) remained. The view from above makes it clear just how small it became (compare the size of the Clown Fish in the previous images, especially the 4th above).