"Pszemol" wrote on Sat, 29 Sep 2007:
http://reefnest.com/diy/slicinganemone/index.html
http://blogs.frags.org/showblog.php?bid=92

Interesting. I'll admit, I didn't know about this forced propagation.

Still, there's a huge difference between carefully cutting a large, mature,
healthy, well-fed specimen in half; vs. randomly chopping it into ten pieces,
or grinding one through a powerhead pump.

If you take an Aiptasia, smash it into paste, and pour it into your tank, I'm
going to bet that a month later you have an Aiptasia infestation all over
tank.

You do the same to a bubble tip anemone, and you'll never see it again in
your tank.

I have read about people toss away a perfectly good and healthy anemone
just because they noticed they expell all water from their bodies, their
normal life function, but they look dead to an uneducated owner.

So tell me, how do you tell when an anemone actually is dead?

Does it prove they are "difficult"? No, they are just different. If
treated right they are pretty hardy animals and we know very well how to
take care about most of the species. It is enough data out there that after
reading something about the animal you will not kill it.

Of course it's possible to take care of them and even raise them.

But that doesn't make it easy, especially compared to some other aquatic
species.

p.s. how many sea anemones have you killed yourself?

I suppose the answer is one, but maybe it depends how you count.

I've had up to five anemones over a few years. Had a sabae and long-tentacle
green for awhile, then they started killing nearby corals, and I returned
them to the LFS.

Had a rose anemone for a long time. It grew big, and split:
http://reef.geddis.org/55g/life.html#rose
Then one of the daughters split again. So I had three for many months.

I got a "reef safe" black spiny sea urchin at one point. Only to discover
that within half an hour it basically found and devoured one of the rose
clones. I pulled the urchin off, but the anemone was hard and bleached white
over 3/4 of its body. I'll admit, I threw that one out (and returned the
urchin).

The other two clones, at different times much later, seemed to grow "sick".
When it happened, the anemone would stay deflated 24 hours a day. Its foot
would release from the rock, and it would just float all over the tank
drifting by the currents. It would refuse to eat. I'd force some meaty food
into its mouth, and it wouldn't react, and the food would eventually fall
out. The tentacles weren't sticky. Anemones are capable of devouring
themselves when in a low-nutrition situation, so the the anemone would slowly
get smaller and smaller over weeks.

It didn't seem to be water conditions. When it happened to the first clone,
the other clone spent the whole time perfectly happy. Full expansion each
day, eating happily, etc. Water changes seemed to have no effect. I don't
know what went wrong. Much later, my last remaining rose clone had the same
kind of failure.

I generally left them alone for a few weeks. Aside from trying to reseat
them in a rock (which never stuck), and force-feed, I didn't know what to do.
Eventually I worried that the animal would decompose and release toxins in
the water, potentially endangering my other fish and corals. So I'll admit
that, in the end, I did remove each animal before it was completely dead.

Note also that during all this, I had only been a reefkeeper for about six
months. I think I'm much better at it now, can maintain much more stable
water conditions, etc. I don't keep anemones any more, but I've got plenty
of sensitive species, such as stony corals and seahorses. And a group of
clownfish, which seem perfectly happy adopting a hammer corals (and before
that, frogspawn corals) as hosts instead of their natural anemones.

OK, your turn. How many anemones have you kept? How many have you killed?
How much propagation have you done?

-- Don
__________________________________________________ _____________________________
Don Geddis http://reef.geddis.org/
Be on the lookout for a leopard which escaped from the zoo early this morning.
It was spotted near the corner of 12th and Cherry at around 8am, and in all
likelihood still is.