"Don Geddis" wrote in message ...
Just to throw in another: anemones are filled with toxins. If you happen to
accidentally kill one (e.g. it gets caught in an overflow or pump intake),
then you could release a great volume of toxins into the tank all at once.

I disagree totally!

1) Even if an anemone is torn in on overflow or pump intake it is not
guarantee it will die. They are pretty hardy animals and can survive
quite a lot of abuse... Think of them more like Aiptasia :-)
I have witnessed personaly a rose bubble tip anemone sucked
into pump intake the way WHOLE ORAL DISC was removed
and anemone survived. Literally only a stump was left on the rock.
In a matter of days the stump healed and guts stopped hanging
out from it. In the two more weeks a small oral disc was formed
with very little tentacles. Anemone started to feed normally!

2) Anemone body is a thin bag filled with *water*. Not toxins, water!
Deflated animal will have almost zero volume of its body.
Even if you grind it into pieces and let to rot in your tank you will
not cause a major outbreak of ammonia or "toxins" in your tank.
The 8-10" rose bubble tip mentioned in the point #1 was damaged
in a 10 gallon tank with fish, crabs, two SPS corals, green button
polyps and red mushroom corals. All things survived with no issues.
There was no water qality issues, no ammonia outbreaks as well.

3) Injured anemone only LOOKS DEAD and rotting, but
this is only an illusion! Leave it in the tank untouched and
in most cases it will recover. These animals have EXTRAORDINARY
capabilities to regrow lost parts of their body and this property
is rutinelly used in the asexual propagation of the anemones.
Anyone who had ever problems with Aiptasia or Majano anemones
in their tanks will confirm how hard is to get rid of them even if
you scrape their stump/foot of the rock with a brush...
Ornamental anemones like bubble tips are not much different.

This is a great example how fish, cats and cows are similar
but anemone totaly different. Try cuttin head of a cat and see
if it survive... And this is exactly what I was talking before.

Agreed. If you kept a Moorish Idol (although I think you said it wasn't doing
that well, unfortunately), you should have no problem with a reef. Or even
with an anemone.

How is the knowledge collected with keeping a morish idol
possible to help someone in keeping a healthy sea anemone???