gigantea collection methods?

[geckoejon]

hello,

does anyone know how they collect gigantea in the wild? i was wondering if the method was possibly causing some high mortality rates and not just the shipping alone. make sense? seems like we have had a lot more healthy gigs coming into the area lately, and wondering what changed? possibly different collection methods?

do they peel them off rock? this seems very time consuming for it to be done in the field. ever try to peel a gig off a rock in your tank?

possibly some other method such as chemicals to get them to let go easier?

thoughts?

 

[ThRoewer]

I would suspect chemicals - narcotics - to get them off easy.
That would also explain why so many are bleached, especially those that like to berry their food deep inside rock crevices. Those can only be collected this way or otherwise you would need break away the rocks around them which is labor intensive and has the risk of tearing their foot and thus making it a wasted effort.

I tried myself to collect some anemones in the Mediterranean and failed miserably because at the first touch they would retract deep into their rock crevice and I couldn't even reach them anymore. The only ones I could collect easily were Actinia equina that preferably settle on flat rock surfaces near the waterline.

So I think the ones that could be collected without narcotics are those that settle on flat surfaces (H. magnifica), those that are attached to a rock small enough to be taken out with the anemone attached to it, or those that settle on coral sand or gravel and could therefore be easily dug out.

The use of narcotics doesn't have to be a bad thing if the right substance is used in the correct concentration.
I suspect the improvement of the survival rates could go back to the collectors having learned to use the correct narcotic at the lowest dose required

 

[Reef1589]

I remember reading somewhere awhile ago that anemones like S. Gig where collected during Low tide when there isn't water on them, because their foot is less attached at that point as they are in the process of moving.

how much truth is behind it, I don't know.. was just something I read somewhere..

as for removing an anemone that's been attached to a rock for a long time.. (speaking for S. Gig as this is what ive experienced with the most) I read this here somewhere too probably 3 years ago, pretty sure in the same thread I read the information above in, Because some anemones spend hours out of water in low tide.. and they have their natural slim coat to actually hold water in... the guy said what he would do is take the rock out of the water for X amount of time and tip it upside down in a bucket so the anemone is just sitting there freely, until it detaches from the rockwork and falls into the bucket of water.

with that being said ive used this method now 3 times on S. gigs that been attached to rockwork for a long period of time (1 blue S. gig I got from a display tank at a bar that was being torn down that had been attached to rockwork for 3+ years, and 2 purple ones that were kept in my tank for 1.5+ years after tank upgrades)
and it has worked for me, safely, without tearing the foot, and without trying to break the rock risking damage to the anemone that ive read all to often
and usually within an hour the anemone looks exactly as it did when I took it out.

**I wouldn't recommend this for everyone.... sometimes its better for some people to just use the rock that the anemone came on**

I was just stating something that has worked for me... .. so far