Proposed propogation and research experiment

[davelin315]

Hey everyone (especially Chip/Flowerseller and Scott/Traveller7), we are having a push at school to be more world-minded and less egocentric with the types of things we do and, of course, one of my first thoughts was reef organism conservation... with the amount of stuff that has been done on here in this club with captive propagation and cloning of bubble tip anemones, I thought what a perfect experiment and project.

 

So, with that in mind, I am looking for more information on them. I know that the Chip-o-matic slicer/dicer has been going full bore and that Scott has been having them split in his tank for a long time, so I'm trying to figure out what the best plan of action is and whether this would be feasible.

 

First, I figure that anemones are fairly dirty and that they split on their own if you feed them enough, so a bare bottom tank would most likely be the plan with a large skimmer on it to handle the waste product. From having spoken with Scott before, I know that they don't necessarily need the most light, so I was thinking that PC lighting would be sufficient.

 

Here's what I don't know - would a "trough" type raceway tank work for this? I was thinking of a very shallow, narrow, but long tank (maybe even use some window box planters or even do a wooden tank with a liner 0 something in the neighborhood of 2-3' long, no more than 12" deep, and 6-8" high. Can they be completely bunched up? Is it possible to "implant" them with something that helps identify them? Are red bubble tip anemones as easy as the greens? Has anyone had them actually breed? Has anyone ever had red and green cross breed? What do you think of this project and its feasibility?

 

Also, if this gets off the ground, is anyone willing to donate some green and red ones? I have a green I'll toss in there, but I would like to get an assortment of different anemones to see if they will also breed.

[traveller7]

Howdy Dave,

 

Lots 'o ?'s there :>)

 

IMHO:

 

1. Sexual breeding is not a good target for this project. Only successful events I know of were aquariums with flow through sea water and natural sunlight. Should not be anything in the way of cross breeding red/green/orange/brown/etc, but again I would skip it without a greenhouse.

2. If sexually breeding them is out, the alternative is natural or manual division. In this case, it's best to stick with single parent line clones. I have had interesting results when mixing non-related specimens, I figure I would skip potential headaches for such a project if I was intensely dividing them.

3. Not aware of anyway to permanently mark them, although folks have dyed anemones for years.....not a good option.

4. PCs with enough intensity are fine.

5. Proposed design sounds fine if not over kill. Calfo's recommendations are typically rubbermaid type tubs with indoor outdoor carpet on the bottom to allow easy removal for division. I prefer rubbermaids and put divisions in the plastic pond planting baskets.

[flowerseller]

Sounds neat Dave,

 

Our anemone propagation set up uses a 20L glass aquarium

It has one return line to this tank with about 100gph.

I do not use any powerheads what so ever.

I go bare bottom in this tank but do have one rock and NO hosting type fish.

Lighting consists of 3 - 18" VHO 50/50 bulbs which will be replaced in Jan when I move things around.

My farm is tied into my main system via the sump.

 

I have plenty of self splits and do more manual splits.

I'n not a big feeder of them and rely mostly on what they capture from the column or light spectrum.

I'm not suggesting they don't need to be feed, I just don't do it much and if I do it's chopped up and rinsed fish from the Giant/Safeway ot VHP like Scott recommended.

 

I'm happy to donate a "healed" RBTA divide to this school project once this system is actually set up, cycled, been through both a bacteria / cyano cycle and ready for live stock.

[traveller7]

Nice mix to such a project: No hosting but anemone tolerant species, i.e. Banggai Cardinals. Non hosting so the anemones can recover, tolerant of the shed nematocysts.

 

Feed tons of mysis and brine, consistent water changes, etc. Might be able to trigger a 2 for propagation project ;>)

 

fwiw: If that was the route to take, make sure to let the anemones finish sliming in separate containers before returning manual divisions to the tank. Why push the tolerance factor

 

fwiw2: Chip's smallish dividers are good candidates for the proposed system, I would avoid the monsters from mine; 2 or 3 would fill the tank :D

 

fwiw3: 48" to long for your space? 48" shop lights on one of Tom's IC430 ballasts would be the way to go.

[davelin315]

Thanks for all of the feedback. I am thinking that 4' would probably be too long as I don't have that space in my room currently. If I were to do this, would you recommend plumbing it into my 75 in the classroom? That would most likely take care of the water quality issues and then I could run a small tank on the side for any manual splits and then just consider that a dump tank that would go down the drain (maybe even just fill it when I do a water change).

 

As for marking them, I wasn't thinking dying them, I think that's a silly thing to do. I was more thinking of whether they would be able to host a small tag inside of them or if this would simply be an irritant that would make them annoyed and either cause them to split or deteriorate. Almost like a microchip, just not a chip at all, but maybe a tiny slip of laminated paper that could be slid into an incision and allowed to heal over.

 

Again, all of this is simply in the R&D stages, so any other ideas or feedback you have would be great.

 

By the way, going back to your (Scott) comment about not intermingling parent lines, what types of results have you had that would say not to do this? Do they compete with each other when they are not clones?

 

I basically figured that sexual reproduction was probably not ever going to happen, but figured it might be worth pursuing.

[traveller7]

For serious propagation efforts, isolating from other critters would be best. Only things that have survived massive natural divisions have been some shrooms and my clowns. We are talking about 10-12 anemones dividing within a few days of each other. Lots of chemicals, etc., released.

 

Not sure there is a fixed rule on clones, single species, but I have some that run away from BTAs of which they are not cloned, while clones frequently cluster. It is anecdotal, but a few of the other Anemone choppers seem to have the same experience.

 

Scars last for quite some time; i.e. damaged tentacles, etc. I'll think about "marking" a bit while observing a batch of mine tonight ;>)