Are baby Haddoni a thing now?

[bradleym]

I've seen about 10-20 of these for sale lately, but never before. Did somebody figure out how to breed them, or are these misidentified?

 

[billysprout]

The black and white ones look more like mertensii to me. But yeah I think they've been coming in like crazy the past couple months. The first wave of haddoni came in super bleached, im glad they're figuring out how to ship them more safely

 

[OrionN]

Some of these, maybe all are not Haddoni. This one here is clearly a Gigantea, by the spots on the column. Maybe the “green Haddoni” pictures on the website or pictures above by @bradleym are Gigantea also.

 

[billysprout]

Some of these, maybe all are not Haddoni. This one here is clearly a Gigantea, by the spots on the column. Maybe the “green Haddoni” pictures on the website or pictures above by @bradleym are Gigantea also.

IIRC mertensii also have spots on the column, and they tend to be more pronounced and extend much further down. they might all just be merts lol.

i should make a diagram

 

[Hot2na]

So ..buy 1 if you're so confident they're not haddoni..$150 for a gig or mertens ain't bad.

 

[bradleym]

Personally, I think they look like Haddoni far more than Gigantea or Mertensii. The tentacles are too short for Gigantea, and the base has neither the bright blue/green of Gigantea, or the reddish veruccae of Mertensii.

I just don't understand where they have been coming up with all these babies. The other possibility I was considering was a different species, like maybe a strange variant of maxi mini.

 

[OrionN]

Baby Gigantea comes in the winter yearly.
The picture of the bit of the column show that anemone clearly not a Haddoni. Stressed Gigantea has short tentacles just as these pictures show.

 

[bradleym]

I am trying very hard to see it, but nothing about these anemones makes me think Gigantea over Haddoni.

 

[OrionN]

Even these verrucae? on the tiny column exposure?
I enlarged the picture from the website and cropped it to show these verrucae.

 

[bradleym]

Even these verrucae? on the tiny column exposure?
I enlarged the picture from the website and cropped it to show these verrucae.

The underside of the average Haddoni oral disc is not perfectly smooth. It looks like this to me:

 

[OrionN]

While it is true that rarely we see some spots on the column of the Haddoni, they are of the same color as the column and either slightly darker or lighter, but not pink, purple or blue like the spots on Gigantea. The verrucae in the small green carpet above is clearly Gigantea spots to me. Shape of the tentacle tips are also very c/w a stressed Gigantea. Gigantea has tapper tentacle tips while Haddoni has blunted bulb tips.
It is true that it is hard to ID an anemone with just a picture or two unless the photographer is knowledgeable and taken the pictures specifically use to ID the anemone. In this case I would ID this specific anemone as Gigantea and would be right at least 90%+ of the time.

 

[billysprout]

can't argue with the OG. if they're mertens the only functional difference from gig will be that they prefer sand over exposed rock. they get some crazy long tentacles around the oral disc and get very big

 

[D-Nak]

Hmmmmm... strange. I wouldn't be surprised to see one or two baby Stichodactyla (gigantea, haddoni, or mertensii) anemones, but this many at once makes me question what they really are. Possible explanations:

1. I'm wondering if they're a species of mini carpet, like the blood-red mini carpets that we often see.
   
   
2. A collector stumbled across these babies from one collection site and shipped them all to AquaSD. We assume Stichodactyla anemones reproduce sexually (meaning instead of cloning they have babies) but we've never witnessed it in the wild or in our captive environments (though we've seen spawning and possible babies, though none have grown into anything resembling an "adult" anemone).
   
   
3. I highly doubt it, but these might've held for a long time at a wholesaler, who possibly forgot about them, and they just dwindled in size. I have a gigantea that's currently only about 2" in diameter. It's a gig that I thought had died because it disappeared into the rockwork. It was once a healthy 8" anemone. My point is that size is not always an indicator of age. We may assume they're babies, but they could be gigs or haddoni that were once very large and healthy, and somewhere along the way got mishandled, causing them to shrink in size.

 

[D-Nak]

can't argue with the OG. if they're mertens the only functional difference from gig will be that they prefer sand over exposed rock. they get some crazy long tentacles around the oral disc and get very big

Merts actually prefer rockwork. I'm guessing you might be referring to haddoni. However, small haddoni are known to prefer rockwork as well (The OG taught me that, and it was true when I had a small haddoni).

 

[D-Nak]

While it is true that rarely we see some spots on the column of the Haddoni, they are of the same color as the column and either slightly darker or lighter, but not pink, purple or blue like the spots on Gigantea. The verrucae in the small green carpet above is clearly Gigantea spots to me. Shape of the tentacle tips are also very c/w a stressed Gigantea. Gigantea has tapper tentacle tips while Haddoni has blunted bulb tips.
It is true that it is hard to ID an anemone with just a picture or two unless the photographer is knowledgeable and taken the pictures specifically use to ID the anemone. In this case I would ID this specific anemone as Gigantea and would be right at least 90%+ of the time.

Since we're discussing the topic of IDing Stichodactyla, the opposite is also true--I have a gig that doesn't have bright verrucae, but everything else is indicative of a gigantea (long-ish tentacles and folded oral disk).

 

[OrionN]

I am with the opinion that Haddoni and Gigantia may interbred. I certainly had a few carpets over the years with characteristics of between Haddoni and Gigantea.

 

[KrisReef]

I wonder if someone figured out how to chop up a big one into many smaller ones?
I was recently trying to dislodge a bubble tip and left it suspended overnight hoping it would let go of the rock and drop in the bucket. It tore, exposing the delicate insides and I figured that it was done. Still, I dropped it back in the tank it had been in and it took a month but 2 days ago the large piece let go of the tiny damaged area and I think I now have 2 from a forced division.
I have never cut nems, I know some people do, so I wonder?
Coicidentally, in the same tank one of the other clones also divided into to, like sympathetic division?

All that to say, I think the new smaller ones are made in a chop shop.

 

[billysprout]

Merts actually prefer rockwork. I'm guessing you might be referring to haddoni. However, small haddoni are known to prefer rockwork as well (The OG taught me that, and it was true when I had a small haddoni).

Yep you're right!

 

[garygb]

I wonder if someone figured out how to chop up a big one into many smaller ones?
I was recently trying to dislodge a bubble tip and left it suspended overnight hoping it would let go of the rock and drop in the bucket. It tore, exposing the delicate insides and I figured that it was done. Still, I dropped it back in the tank it had been in and it took a month but 2 days ago the large piece let go of the tiny damaged area and I think I now have 2 from a forced division.
I have never cut nems, I know some people do, so I wonder?
Coicidentally, in the same tank one of the other clones also divided into to, like sympathetic division?

All that to say, I think the new smaller ones are made in a chop shop.

Bubble tips naturally divide asexually and theoretically can recover from being manually divided. I 've never cut one myself, so I can't speak from direct experience, and I don't know if the frags return to the full vigor of a healthy BTA. The only other host species that regularly divides by asexual fission is H. magnifica. All the other hosts primarily reproduce sexually, and each individual is either a male or female. I say primarily, because sometimes budding can occur. The way mags and BTAs asexually divide, technically called longitudinal fission, has similarities to being fragged, budding not so much. All that to say, it's improbable the baby gigs/haddonies/merten's--whatever these are--were the result of fragging.

 

[billysprout]

I wonder if someone figured out how to chop up a big one into many smaller ones?
I was recently trying to dislodge a bubble tip and left it suspended overnight hoping it would let go of the rock and drop in the bucket. It tore, exposing the delicate insides and I figured that it was done. Still, I dropped it back in the tank it had been in and it took a month but 2 days ago the large piece let go of the tiny damaged area and I think I now have 2 from a forced division.
I have never cut nems, I know some people do, so I wonder?
Coicidentally, in the same tank one of the other clones also divided into to, like sympathetic division?

All that to say, I think the new smaller ones are made in a chop shop.

It's been done but you can only cut it in half and it takes a while to heal. https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/gig-‘ems-grand-gigantea-gathering.850187/page-4#post-10305262