Survey of Survival Rates of Anemones

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Anemone

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Here are some survey results taken by well known author Joyce Wilkerson. Unfortunately, these results are not surprising to me:

"Recently, Joyce Wilkerson took a survey on captive anemone life span. Only 5 percent of hobbyists with 2-5 years of experience had been able to keep anemones alive for more than two years, and only 1 out of 32 anemones lived for more than 5 years. The anemones simply aren't surviving."


Anemones should live hundreds of years. :(
 
Dreadful !

Was there a distinction made between the survival rate of wild caught nennies and tank propogated nennies?
 
That is shocking. This makes me wonder... should we then keep them? The problem is, you will always have petshops import them, and thus they WILL get bought... I think that there should be laws implimented to prevent any anemone's being sold. Another major issue unfortunately is that anemone's are eaten in the Eastern countries...

A bigger question I have than what's the survival rate, is what is the reproduction rate? Are the anemone population growing fast enopugh to keep up with the deaths in the species? I am not in the hobby long enough to know how fast an anemone "offspring" grows to a "mature" size...
 
Jaco, In the States in particular, nennie farming is being done extremely successfully, In south africa no one seems to have gone into it in a scale that would be any threat to the import business.... if memory serves me correctly, a relatively small propogation system can turn one adult nennie into a little over 1000 in 12 months time ..... the market in south africa is perhaps one of the big problems at this stage !
 
Neil H said:
..... the market in south africa is perhaps one of the big problems at this stage !
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I don't think the market is the problem. Generally the problem is that wild imported nemmies are very cheap and propagated producers find it unprofitable to compete with the imports.

Very similar to Clownfish. The imported stock cost less than R10.00 per fish, so even if get 50% die off, the fish still costs less than R20. Now breeding Clownfish can be done, but at R 20 a fish, loads of PT for very little profit.
 
i would love to know what sort of mark up we are paying on corals and fish ..... 100% 300% 1000% ??????? the average price for a clown fish is wht R160........ fish is R10, wht is the cost of shipping R30?????
 
and yesterday I met a young chap that was sold a 35 litre jebo tank and 3 fish (2 clowns and a boxy) on the same day, no LR, no nothing, and now a week later he wanted a nennie! really p$###@ed me off a LPS can do that!

Told him to take the fish back to the LPS!, They were going to die! makes me sick!

I have decided, Nennies are better off in the ocean!
 
Okey Anemone. Here's the deal, pay a few $'s into my account and I'll make nennie farm in South Africa of nice proportions!!! ;)

No really, my future plans are to learn much more about these creatures, keep one or two succesfully and learn some more... Then, I would like to open an Anemone hospital, where I will take sick anemone's from LFS and keepers alike, and TRY and save them... Then, once the nennie is fine, I want to help reefers with their setups to show them where they went wrong and how to keep these animals... With that, I'd have a nennie farm, where I can propogate them, and try prevent imports...

But I still have some way to go before then...
 
Jaco Schoeman said:
A bigger question I have than what's the survival rate, is what is the reproduction rate? Are the anemone population growing fast enopugh to keep up with the deaths in the species? I am not in the hobby long enough to know how fast an anemone "offspring" grows to a "mature" size...
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No, this is a huge problem, they are being harvested at a much much faster rate than they are reproducing in the wild. Its alarming actually.

A large anemone in the ocean can be hundreds of years old. There are some scientists that believe some anemones are about 2000 years old.
 
I have a friend of mine that just got back from Taiwan and found a few people that can supply corals and other livestock very cheap but were not prepared to compromise on the quality of shipping them to South Africa - So livestock cheap but to bring them safely and healthy to our shores - expensive! Some of the guys even offer dead on arrival guarantees knowing that they expertly packaging the livestock would be worth the while!
 
lIghty said:
and yesterday I met a young chap that was sold a 35 litre jebo tank and 3 fish (2 clowns and a boxy) on the same day, no LR, no nothing, and now a week later he wanted a nennie! really p$###@ed me off a LPS can do that!
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The only thing thats going to stop the LFS from doing that is if people stop buying. Money is a powerful too!!!!!
 
Neil H said:
i would love to know what sort of mark up we are paying on corals and fish ..... 100% 300% 1000% ??????? the average price for a clown fish is wht R160........ fish is R10, wht is the cost of shipping R30?????
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Shipping is a huge cost to all marine LS.

I have seen some numbers, a R100.00 fish will end up retailing at R800.00 due to the insane shipping costs.
 
Jaco Schoeman said:
Okey Anemone. Here's the deal, pay a few $'s into my account and I'll make nennie farm in South Africa of nice proportions!!! ;)

No really, my future plans are to learn much more about these creatures, keep one or two succesfully and learn some more... Then, I would like to open an Anemone hospital, where I will take sick anemone's from LFS and keepers alike, and TRY and save them... Then, once the nennie is fine, I want to help reefers with their setups to show them where they went wrong and how to keep these animals... With that, I'd have a nennie farm, where I can propogate them, and try prevent imports...

But I still have some way to go before then...
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:lol: Check is in the mail!

I have rescued a few anemones. It can be rewarding, and SOOOOOOOO nasty smelling when they die!!!!! Again, PUKE!!!!

Keep learning, if this is what you want to do, you'll get there!!!
 
does that argument not hold true for nennies then Warr? what would the cost of landing nennies in SA be??? would propogation lets say a RBTA not be profitable based on the nennie not having to be transported ? ?
 
Anemone said:
Are there any fish breeders in South Africa?
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On a comercial scale to my knowledge no....

on a local / hobby / research scale, yes
 
Think in the wild their reproduction rate is not to bad, some spawn some clone. I agree with the statement that restrictions should be placed on some anemones. However (I am by no means an expert but) I have been keeping my anemone for 2 years + and I do believe that some anemones can be kept and is very hardy. Over the last 4 hears I have moved 4 times including my whole setup. My nenny doesn’t like it but she survives 

Definitely the Clown and anemone is one of the main attractions for noobs in the hobby unfortunately this contributes to many deaths, but MASA is trying to change that.

There is many species of anemones each with their own special needs. IMO the traders just take everything they can from the wild to sell it the marine trade. For instance beautiful anemones are taken from the wild with brilliant colours, when stressed they bleach. They arrive in the LFS a white colour hobbyists see them (and I must say the white anemones are pretty) the buy the nenny not knowing they are sick. This contributes to a great deal to nenny losses.
 
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