So much is unknown about anemones it makes it hard to give simple answers to specific care questions. To make it more interesting we put these animals into aquariums and subject them to our home "experiment". Then it is our job, as the consumer and the collector, to make sure we care for these animals appropriately. How do we do this? By people sharing their experiences and listening to others. This is very basic, but for some its painstakingly hard. Infact what a great day that a new anemone keeper gets to talk with a breeder with far more experience any time of day from home. So why not try and share experiences? There's so much communication between people its almost deafening, so we need to choose wisely what we listen too. Don't make it any harder please.
Now I will speak as a consumer for which I am. Anemone care for me starts at the LFS or maybe on the internet if you can actually see what your getting. This is a very important part for sucess in any kind of anemone. It is up to the consumer, err...mostly in the real world, to choose a healthy specimen in order to not only ensure a long and prosperous life, but also to deter the import of ones that are not healthy. In the long run it will hopefully yield better techniques and procedures for capturing, importing, or aquaculturing. So I will never buy a bleached anemone again, even if it means higher prices to get quality livestock to a limited extent. This is just my opinion so I'm not bashing anyone who has bought one cause I have too. So please if you have the chance to buy an anemone from your LFS watch it for 5-7 days in their tanks. The reason being I've seen, when I worked at my LFS, and have experienced buying anemones purely on the way it looks at the moment, to find out later either at home or the next day in the store that it looks completely different. For Internet sales maybe you can trust some companies as to the health of their anemones- I have and it turned out ok.
To speak about care during acclimation, patience is key, as always. It would help to know the temp, salinity, and pH of the water it came from so I always ask or test the water that it comes in. Anemones are very particular to changes in their environment so the stress of acclimation can cause and have caused many of them to perish. I have noticed however that one time I didn't acclimate one and it did better adjusting to my tank than my first one. I'd have to say that the Heteractis crispa was very healthy though.
Once properly acclimated, the anemone is placed into the tank. I'd suggest reserving a large area for the anemone to wander and eventually find its place. This is where luck comes in handy for some, but by researching its proper environment and re-creating it in your tank as closely as possible can help to ensure its happiness. Once it has established itself in your tank anemones can be very hardy. I can definately speak or H. crispa on this because of what I put mine through. IMO I think H. crispa is even as tough as E. quadricolor. So there is hope for us anemone lovers that understand our role in it all.
If other people have anemones even if they never were bleached it would be great to have more information and experiences on the subject.
Here's some more pics of my anemones from today:
The smaller and tan colored H. crispa:
And it feeding:
Also my rock anemone with 2 sexy anemone shrimp:
