Mushroom anemone, probably Discosoma species

Saturday I made an impulse purchase. I’d been thinking about adding some new creatures, but I was thinking more like a couple more snails of the same type as Drew, or maybe another peppermint shrimp so Kalimba would have a companion/mate. What I got instead was another mushroom anemone. It wasn’t in a position in the display tank where I could get a good look at it. It was scrunched up a bit (I now realize) so that it looked sort of deformed. It appeared to be some kind of red and white striped mushroom anemone, with some sort of white area on it, and red polyps randomly scattered. Unusual, but not attractive. The image below of it in the bag gives you some idea what it looked like at the aquarium store.

In the bag, it looked nothing like what it would look like once I got it into my tank. Size, shape, and color were all transformed!

It was rather late in the afternoon when I got it, so by the time I’d acclimated it moonlight was already on. I stuck it into one of the holes in the Tonga rock, took a few hideous blue pics and went to bed.

The next morning I asked my husband how it looked since he had been up for a while when I woke. He hesitated and said tentatively that it was OK. I padded into the living room to see. My mouth dropped open. There was this huge beautiful green and red striped anemone (see pic at top of post) spread out over the rock. I just gaped then started babbling. My husband said that he thought that this was the new mushroom anemone, but he’d been hesitant when I’d asked about it because it looked nothing like what I’d bought, so much so that he wasn’t even sure he was looking at the right thing in the tank! This is easily the best $10 I’ve spent on my little reef project in all the years I’ve had it. It’s upstaging everyone in the tank right now. Though the only one who seems to mind is the green mushroom which was been slightly sulky since I got the new one. It hasn’t spread out fully in the past few days. But it shrinks and stretches so much I’m not sure if this is significant. I do find myself wondering if it knows there’s a new animal on “its” rock. How could it know? Can it “smell” the new mushroom? There’s still a couple of inches between them and Green isn’t exactly taking over, so I think they will be OK even if they grow or multiple a bit. If not I can always move them, as both are just on tiny bits of rocky substrate stuck into holes.

There is an unusual area on the new mushroom, one of the white stripes is fatter in one area. I looked at this as closely as I could at the aquarium store, and am satisfied that this is merely an aberration, not a disease.

I’ve already updated my header image to include the new addition and added it to the Meet The Creature page.