Dying Anemones for color

[saveafish]

I disagree with this but have found something happening in the trade.
Just watch for it. This will become bad before it gets better.
Some are dying Anemones to change their color. This is how it is done. They take a small tank usually 20g long. with little filter on it. Fill it up with the food coloring of choice. Placing the Anemones in it for 24hrs-48hrs. Once the Anemones contracts and expands it fill up with the food coloring and dying it to that color. They are also calling it color enhancing. As a side effect of this they usually die off in a few weeks. Though this is long enough to get it from the dist. to the retailer to you.

 

[gojk]

This has been popular with Sebae nems and yes, most of the time they end up dying. Or best case they live and the color washes away.

 

[billsreef]

This has been going for a couple of decades at least. Even gets done to some soft corals

 

[Spyderturbo007]

That's not cool. Any way to spot ones that this has been done to so I don't purchase one?

 

[billsreef]

They look a pretty obvious non natural color to anyone that has a working familiarity with natural specimens. So if it doesn't look natural, assume it's not

 

[kduen]

Also if the anemone is one solid (usually bright) color it has most likely been dyed.

 

[asylumdown]

look for it with sebae anemones. The most common colour choices are neon pink and neon yellow. There are no neon pink or yellow (I'm talking like NEON) sebae anemones naturally. Also, the foot, oral disc, and tentacles will all be the same uniform colour, when sebaes are generally two toned in relation to the foot and disk.

If for some strange reason you are bamboozled by the LFS and are green enough to not know better (I'm ashamed to admit this is how I learned about dying anemones), when you get it home there will be a good chance it will have tinted the bag water whatever colour it had been dyed.

In this case, your anemone is almost certainly going to die, as the process causes a fatal degree of bleaching. The people who have successfully brought one back from this usually have to put in an extreme level of care, up to and including syringing food directly in to the mouth of the animal as they often stop feeding on their own. Better to just not ever buy them, and hopefully send the message that it's an unacceptable practice with your wallet. If you buy one and discover after the fact that it's been dyed (try to not get in to this situation in the first place), you should demand the store take it back and refund your money regardless of what their refund policies are.