I would say people in general report negative things more frequently than positive things. You seldomly hear from a happy camper. But you sure hear it when something is broken. People who sell livestock and have the most at stake have said the same things as me but they are often brushed off as having a conflict of interest. To me, they are a good source of info because they deal with livestock every day and they hear from customers more than anyone else. If they do something stupid to jeopardize their livestock, it could cost them a lot of money in dead livestock.

10/10 of my goldfish have died within 2 years. Its easy to believe more than 9/10 tangs and more than 9/10 anemones will die within 2 years. Outside Canreef, I know only a few people with saltwater tanks and from what they tell me, no one has kept anything more than 2 years. People on Canreef generally have a higher success than the average reef keeper who aren't online.

Reefmaster, of course that depends on what you mean by long term... one year or ten years? The technology to keep anemones hasn't even been around for ten years, really. I believe that given a stable environment and a healthy start, an anemone would live forever, even in captivity. I think if there's any reason an anemone dies after it's been in captivity for, say, five years, it's because of an external factor, ie. the owner moved the tank, changed something, had a power-outage, etc.

tank is a 90 gal. Pictures in Gallery

I did a huge search on all the forums I could find on the subject and my conclusion is that most people seemed to have alot of opinion, but not alot of experience with anemones. Generally speaking, those who had anemones die on them say they're hard to keep, those who keep them successfully say they're not. There are at least several members on this board who keep btas successfully with seemingly little effort so I think our odds are a little better than 1 in 10.


three dawgs...how long have you had your anemones?

most of them for over 4 months. The last two were about a two month time in my tank

yes long term could be 1 or 10 years, but if the anem doesn't make it a week then we need to readjust our timeframe. once we can successfully keep them 10 years lets look at 50. i don't know anyone who has kept an anem for even 5 years. not good for an animal that lives 200-300 for some species in nature.

Well as noted I don't think this hobby has been around long enough to really know. You wouldn't open a business and shut down the first day because you didn't have any customers... I think it's a given that good water quality and good lighting are keys to keeping anemones, and protein skimmers and metal halides are both relatively new inventions versus the 150 or so years people have been keeping saltwater fish.

This is hands down the fastest thread I've ever seen on Canreef.

Oh, a disclaimer...I don't have experience with all types of anemones so I should probably qualify my statement to say that I disagree that all anemones are hard to keep. Maybe the carpets and others really are hard but certainly when I get a big tank, I am going to try them. But I do feel that anemones are often collectively put unfairly into the 99.9% die category when most other livestock die at high rates as well. We as online reefers raise the average but we don't make up the majority of the buyers in my opinion.

In that case I'm tempted to think that all that chemical chaos in your tank (typical in the first year) are finally catching up to your anemones. Think about it. Let's say your tank is 7 months old. That means you've had anemones since your tank was just 3 months old. I'd say the the tanks first 6 months are the hardest on any animal. Your anemones were probably stressed to sh!t already, and something just pushed them over the edge.

havent skimmers been around since the 60's?