Belize is well known in the Caribbean Sea as a concentration of biodiversity to divers, but now it’s finally going to be on the map in the aquarium world as well. Recent imports of flower anemones and St. Thomas shrooms from Belize are redefining what we’ve come to expect of these magnificent and popular reef aquarium animals.
Flower anemones have been very hot in the reef scene for the last several years, and there’s been an astonishing number of specimens collected in recent years with mind-blowing colors and patterns. These new Belizean Flower Anemones are another beast altogether though, both in color and especially in their size, and even the novice Flower Nem collector can appreciate how different these look.
In addition to just being much larger and having very abundant tentacles, the Belizean Flower Anemones have a color palette all their own. The shades of orange are a little more fluorescent than the ones we usually get from Florida, but most of all there’s definitely a subset that have a beautiful rainbow color across their oral disc. It’s not a pattern rainbow like you’d expect from a Micro Lord coral, but more of a rainbow gradient, and really really bright!
Riding along in the same boxes as the Belizean flower nems are a fresh new crop of St. Thomas Mushroom Anemones that are also very impressive. The tentacles are a blazing fiery red that we haven’t seen to this degree before. Some of them have bubbly white tentacles and/or a nice green base color that contrasts very brilliantly with the red tentacles, which themselves are also much more branched than you’d expect from a bubbly St. Thomas Shroom.
Big thanks to Sea Dwelling Creatures for sharing pictures from their most recent shipment which also included some true Gorgonia seafans, which we look forward to seeing in the future.
