Gigantea, magnifica and other difficult anemones

Haddoni

Well, the good thing about Haddonis is that they are very hardy and do very well in captivity. It just comes down to what direction you want to go in for your tank. Anemones with clowns are one of my favorites. I have a Magnifica on one side of my tank and I had a Haddoni on the other!:eek: The Haddoni had mating clarkiis in it and the Magnifica has mated Ocellaris clowns.

I really enjoyed the Haddoni, but decided , after a long time with the Haddoni, that it was time to get a wider variety of fish. So it's really a matter of personal preferance as far as what fish you want to keep.

Joel A said:
hmmm interesting that doesn't sound very good :(

Especially since i had been looking into a mandarin latley... :eek:

The foot is halfway buried in the sand, and halfway attached to a large piece of base rock..

i suppose my clowns don't need an anemone to host in, but it would be a shame to have to let it go... hmm
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i do want to keep some smaller fish... maybe i should look into trying to get rid of it.. it is beautiful but it is also taking up a good deal of room as well.
 
Larry Jackson lost many purple tangs to his Haddoni years ago. They can catch large and healthy fish.
 
Even pretty small haddonis can catch and kill large fish. They may not be able to eat them, but the damage has already been done. The tentacles stick like glue to fish scales and the nematocists (sp?) are full of a poison that immobilises the fish. Other anemones are tuned to catch different prey. There isn't any good scientific data that I am aware of, but in my experience and from other anemone keepers, magnificas go more for shrimp and in my tank have only taken chromis when they were just added to the tank and may have had compromised slime coats or scales or something like that.
 
yeah, i've witnessed first hand how sticky the haddoni can be... i've dropped a few snails into it before by accident, as well as a few corals. All were goners, and it took a while for the anemone to let go of them.
 
Gulp!

I had to laugh when I read this. :p It reminded me of the many times I dropped a coral or a snail in my Haddoni. When I tried to retrieve them, the Haddoni would go from a 16 inch "blanket" to 1 inch in diameter by burying itself almost totally in the sand! It did this really quickly so I only got one shot. If I did not retreive the animal on the first try, then the next day the shell or coral skeleton would be laying on the sand next to the Haddoni.:(

Joel A said:
yeah, i've witnessed first hand how sticky the haddoni can be... i've dropped a few snails into it before by accident, as well as a few corals. All were goners, and it took a while for the anemone to let go of them.
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With all this talk about haddonis, I thought I'd post a pic of mine. I bought this from Dong a while back, maybe 2 years ago. It hung out in my fuge with very little flow and a 250 MH until a couple of weeks ago, when I decided to set up an anemone tank, mainly for the haddoni. I have to say, this has been one of the easier anemones I've kept. The mouth is gaping a bit in the pic, but it has settled down nicely in it's new home. This is the "stickiest" anemone I've evr handled. It's gotten stuck to my hand more than once. The only fish in this tank are a pair of mated tomatoe clowns that I've had for at least 5-6 years now. I'd love to add a mantis shrimp, but that too would probably get eaten by the haddoni.
 

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Tangs

I never lost a Tang to the Haddoni. Maybe it was the circular rock-wall or maybe I was just lucky. My carpet was really large, as those who had seen it can attest. I'd say it was around 18 inches at its largest, growing from the 10 inches it was when I bought it. I soon learned that I could keep it from growing by feeding it only a shrimp or two rarely. If Haddonis are fed regularly, they will grow very large and I assume will pose a greater risk to the fish in your tank.

Greg Hiller said:
Larry Jackson lost many purple tangs to his Haddoni years ago. They can catch large and healthy fish.
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Pic

Nice pic Don. Actually that is probably the best way to keep these, in my opinion - in a specialty tank. BTW, can you bring some sand for me to the meeting on Saturday?


ReeferMedic said:
With all this talk about haddonis, here's a pic of mine. I bought this from Dong a while back, maybe 2 years ago. It hung out in my fuge with very little flow and a 250 MH until a couple of weeks ago, when I decided to set up an anemone tank, mainly for the haddoni. The mouth is gaping a bit in the pic, but it has settled down nicely in it's new home. This is the "stickiest" anemone I've evr handled. It's gotten stuck to my hand more than once. The only fish in this tank are a pair of mated tomatoe clowns that I've had for at least 5-6 years now. I'd love to add a mantis shrimp, but that too would probably get eaten by the haddoni.
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So far he reports that 2 of the new clowns wander the tank durring the day with 6 mostly keeping to the anemone. At night they all seem to pile into it for sleeping.

Very interesting. I've asked around several times and never found anyone who had juveniles with a mated pair. I'd like to add some jiveniles to my pair that frequently spawn in the purple H. Crispa that I picked up a couple of years ago from another Boston reefer.
 
~Flighty~ said:
I hope so, but time will tell. The problem with fragging anemones is avoiding infection while it heals up. The chopping is the easy part. I still can't believe I just did this.
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It was only a matter if time before you got the nads to do it Cindy. :) How do they look now?
 
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