I spent a bunch of time researching salt water anemones, ones that resembled the one that I had in particular, and there is a ton of info on the internet once I started digging. What I found is that yes, this anemone was most probably dyed, and it might have survived if I had been just a little more careful with it.

It required a fairly specific lighting and exposure plus more water flow over it than I was providing. If I had provided the specific lighting needs, it MIGHT have recovered its internal bacteria enough to survive as it was not a "pure" yellow even after the dye, which could indicate that it had some of the needed bacteria.

One site gave instructions on how to pick out a healthy anemone, do a search on Shanes Quality Marine of Los Angeles and you can find it too. Once I read it, it was one of those "duh" moments, because of course the advice that they gave made perfect sense once I read it.

Another interesting thing I found is that it might even have been some sort of hybrid between the beaded (h. aurora) and the normal (h. crispa) "sebae" anemone. It had a beaded look to its tentacles but the "beads" were much more uniform than those that were in any of the pics that I found.

So, I went back to the LFS and carefully inspected the specimen available there, and decided to let it die on them and not on me - it was too white and looked to me like it was languishing as it was down in a deepest part of their tank in almost dark, laying on the sand and not attaching to anything. They also told me that it had been like that since they got it a couple of weeks ago. My diagnosis based on my research and their info is that it is going to die in the fairly near future.

I haven't given up, I am just still looking for a fairly healthy specimen to try again. I also found some interesting do-it-yourself plans for building a cheap but effective denitrator.

Thanks,
k8edid