Acropora Spawning!

[ReefdUp]

So, there I was......

 

I was *supposed* to be cleaning up our guest bedroom (aka my office, our storage room, my craft room) today, but I took a detour to look at my quarantine tank.  <Insert guilty puppy face for spouse...>

 

My newly acquired Upscales Acropora microclados from gws3 (as in, acquired yesterday) had a plethora of white dots covering it.  Needless to say, I did not complete my task.  

 

 

 

[YHSublime]

Woaaaaah! Do you think it was stress from moving tanks? I've had torches spawn in my tanks, but never acropora! 

[DaJMasta]

As I understand it, it takes months for the gametes to form, so they had been growing for quite a while.  Most of the work I've heard about with intentionally spawning them says that it has to do with temperature/moon cycle, so it could be that the shift between tanks and lighting was enough to trigger it to release.

 

Do you think they're eggs alone or egg/sperm packets?  If you've got both there could even be a chance of larvae.... and coral larvae are still a really strange concept to me haha.

 

Great catch!

[howaboutme]

Ok, that's it! I'm making the trip to Silver Springs next time!

 

Great pictures!

[Cris]

Pretty cool!

[ReefdUp]

1 hour ago, YHSublime said:

Woaaaaah! Do you think it was stress from moving tanks? I've had torches spawn in my tanks, but never acropora! 

 

Right?! This was my first captive Acropora spawning event - so cool! 

 

I was wondering about stress too, but as DaJMasta mentioned, it takes a while for them to get this mature. My guess is that gws3 had mature spawning colonies - of which this was a frag. The stress might've just sped up the process (this occurred during broad daylight). I did reach out to him to see if his corals were spawning at the same time, and they were not.

 

1 hour ago, DaJMasta said:

As I understand it, it takes months for the gametes to form, so they had been growing for quite a while.  Most of the work I've heard about with intentionally spawning them says that it has to do with temperature/moon cycle, so it could be that the shift between tanks and lighting was enough to trigger it to release.

 

Do you think they're eggs alone or egg/sperm packets?  If you've got both there could even be a chance of larvae.... and coral larvae are still a really strange concept to me haha.

 

Great catch!

 

Thanks! It was really exciting! I captured a few to see what would happen under the microscope. I'm guessing they're just eggs though. When I witnessed a wild Acropora spawn, the water was full of eggs and sperm separately, so I imagine the case is the same here. 

 

Funny thing is... last night I realized my moonlight cycle wasn't working properly and had probably been turned off for a year. During that time I've had two spawning events. I need to document these things better!

 

[ReefdUp]

1 hour ago, howaboutme said:

Ok, that's it! I'm making the trip to Silver Springs next time!

 

Great pictures!

 

Highly recommend the corals from gws3 - they were obviously great.

 

Thanks! I have a bunch more that I'll throw on my website.

 

31 minutes ago, Cris said:

Pretty cool!

 

Thank you!

[gws3]

Very cool and thanks for sharing. I have not witnessed any spawning events in any of my systems recently, but I believe it typically happens at night and I can't say I've been checking with a flashlight either. So I'm probably missing all sorts of events, haha.

 

I have seen developing gametes when I frag SPS before. They look like small red or brown eggs, one per polyp, located pretty deep down in the corallite at the base of the polyp. I imagine the stress of being bagged and changing systems caused release of the gametes in this situation. Almost all my tanks are in the basement (natural sunlight minimal) and I run a fixed photoperiod, so I'm not sure there are any other triggers that would cause release.

 

I am glad to see my coral are healthy enough to support spawning events, makes me happy!