| Delphinus |
07-29-2004 03:27 PM |
Despite being probably about 15 years since it was first published, I think it's still basically the definitive standard as far as identifying species and indicating their geographic ranges and such. I have the print version and it's actually one of my favourite books, I'll just pick it up and read about a few things every now and again. It's only shortcoming, if it is one, is that the care requirements for anemones in captivity was not well understood 15 years ago so they don't say much about that except for "don't try it." I've never spoken to Dr. Fautin myself but from what I understand by talking to others who have, she still has strong personal feelings, disapproving of the practise of keeping anemones in captivity, due to the overall dismal statistics of how many don't survive to their natural lifespans. Personally I feel that we have come a long way in the last 10-15 years and I think it is possible to replicate their natural environment enough to be able to attempt keeping them (if me make an honest effort to care for them properly, at least). (I guess if I didn't feel that way I'd be a huge hypocrite!) Entacmaea quadricolor makes an ideal specimen for most tanks due to its smaller overall size (relatively, compared to the other species, at least .. it can still be impressively large regardless), it's somewhat larger range of tolerances for certain parameters such as temperature and lighting, and reproduces by fission fairly readily in captivity (so obtaining a captive split, rather than a wild-caught specimen, should be fairly easy to do). Captive splits are always better to obtain than wild-caught because 1) they tend to be adapted already to life in captivity, so their survival rates are much higher and 2) an anemone wasn't taken out of the wild.
Anyhow, I love anemones and love nothing more than just looking at them or reading up on them, so I can't blame anyone for feeling the same way. Good luck and I hope you have fun reading up! :cool:
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