A small translucent anemone on a slender column, up to about 5 cm (2 in) tall, with long thin tentacles and a brownish tint from the algae living inside it. It grows in crowds on sheltered hard surfaces - harbour walls, jetty legs, rubble in still water - rather than on open reef.
It spreads by leaving pieces of itself behind: as the animal creeps, fragments of the foot tear off and each grows into a new anemone, so one individual becomes a colony without ever spawning. That, plus a tolerance for poor water, has made it a pest in aquariums worldwide and a laboratory workhorse. Because it hosts the same symbiotic algae as reef corals but is easy to keep and quick to grow, most of what is known about how coral bleaching works at the cellular level was learned from this unremarkable little animal.
- small, translucent brown, with a slender column
- long thin tentacles, far fewer than a carpet anemone
- grows in crowds on sheltered hard surfaces
- height up to 5 cm
