Your EXPERIENCE with carpet anemone

[erik7281]

SHOULD I GET A CARPET ANEMONE?

I have the opportunity of getting a free beautiful yellow carpet anemone for one of my 120 gallon tanks that has t5 and LED lights with clownfish, gobies, hawkfish, triggerfish, 10 bagaii cardinalfish and a kole tang

Should I get the anemone???

Are they as bad as people say and will they kill every fish as they show on youtube?

Please only share your opinion if you have experience with these animals

[Dkuhlmann]

This should be posted in the Anemone and clownfish forum you will get better results.

Can't beat that price and if it's healthy even better. Yes carpets can and will eat fish, sometimes including clownfish.

[MMM33732]

I had one for about 2 years. It grew steadily and was about 12" when I got rid of it. It was a beautiful piece, but starting a few months after I got it, fish new and old would disappear at a rate of about 1 every 4 months. It wasn't until I moved a clown back into the display (who found his way into my overflow and sump) that I realized it was the nem eating the fish. When I added the clown back, he swam too close to the nem and was eaten within a few seconds. Those things are sticky. If it grabbed a clown, it would grab any of my fish. Prior to that I assumed the missing fish had died and been eaten by my cleanup crew and their bodies/bones were hidden behind rocks. Since getting rid of the nem, I haven't lost a single fish. I personally wont get another one if there are fish in the tank, but that's me.

[davocean]

If you have clowns already I would suggest you try to match w/ a natural host nem for best results, some clowns may never go in that carpet.
They get big, limit swim space, this is often what leads to fish deaths, it's not like they hunt fish, they are opportunistic.
I would look at the stickied list in nem forum and see what your clowns would normally be hosted by, and then look at tank requirements, and let that help guide you.
Don't just grab for the good deal.

[joshky]

No such thing as a true yellow carpet, it's either a bleached neon green or dyed. (there is one close exception here on RC, but it's still close to green IMO) Carpet anemones, especially Gigantea are considered EXPERT only because they get infections real easily and require treatment with antibiotics. If your tank isn't mature I would say pass.

Haddoni are worse than Gigantea for eating fish, however both are fish eaters. If you can't live with fish being food for your anemone, do not buy one.

[ThRoewer]

^^ This

A yellow anemone should always send alarms off. Especially if the anemone is uniformly yellow you can assume it is a bleached one that was dyed to make a quick buck with an uneducated buyer. A bleached and dyed anemone will in most cases die within a couple of month, even in the hands of experts. More likely it will only survive a couple of weeks.

If the anemone is for clownfish you should ideally match them with one of their natural hosts.

[Sk8r]

Plus---carpets grow large. If you're ok with it taking up half the 120, a carpet is pretty spectacular. But I agree about the color: not a good thing.

[snorvich]

Haddoni are worse than Gigantea for eating fish, however both are fish eaters. If you can't live with fish being food for your anemone, do not buy one.

this.