Anemone Split --5 pics

[DMBillies]

This morning my green bubble tip split and I thought I'd share some pictures of the split in action. I noticed that it had moved off of it's normal spot and was looking a little elongated so I watched it for a few minutes until I realized what was going on and then started taking pictures. It took about 20 minutes total from the time I first saw it in the new spot until it was totally split in two. The anemones look a little bit rough right now and are hiding in dark corners, but I didn't notice any nasties going into the water like other people have reported (running some carbon anyway).

A couple of months ago in it's normal spot...

Moved just to left from last pic, elongate, and started to pull apart...

Pulling a little bit farther apart...

Just a thread left together...

Finished splitting...

The anemone toward the bottom has sinced moved into the little cave below it and the one on the top has squeezed itself into the rocks a little farther. From what I understand in a few days they will be back to normal and will probably come back out of their "hiding spots." Correct me if I'm wrong on that...

 

[gflat65]

They will likely start roaming. Mine always looked a lot worse than that, though, when they split. There was little tentacle inflation at all for several days afterward. I'd just keep an eye on them roaming. My mother would usually go to generally the same spot after healing, but the babies typically went on a walkabout. If you want to remove one, the time to do it is when they are walking. If they are actively moving (very slowly, but haven;t settled in anywhere), you can easily and gently work your finger between them and rock to pull them off (apply a little pressure after getting your finger under them). If not and it settles in someplace you don't want it, you can always chisel it off the rock. I've done that numerous times and most of the times, the anemone popped off the rock from the vibration of the hammer hitting the chisel. It's almost like I force a muscle contraction on the foot. It was crawling in the bag on the way home (and thus began coralreefing's massive GBTA collection, though he had at least one other green before he got one from me).

Have you been feeding it more than normal (and define what is normal)? I foudn that I was able to force a clone consistently in under 12 days every time I tried by setting a feeding cycle for a month or so, then feeding more often and quantity (1-2 pcs of krill every week to 3 every other day). When my RO problems started a couple of years ago, I went from 2 anemones to 8 in less than two days (they split as result of stress, too). Fun little critters.

 

[CKreef]

if you want a new home for the baby ill take it ill pick up the feeder this weekend too

 

[DMBillies]

gflat... thanks for the info on the anemone... funny thing is, I can't really tell which is the "mother" and which is the baby. It split darn near down the middle. I think I'm going to hold on to both of them for now. I like them and this will give me a little bit of leeway in case something bad happens to one of them (I'm still not totally confident in my reef keeping skills or my ability to not do something stupid like drop a rock on them). Good to know how to get them off should I want to though. I'll just make sure that they don't run over any of my corals. I already moved some of my xenia to get them out of any potential path.

As far as feeding, I wasn't feeding it anything except for what it could catch from feeding my fish for quite a while (1.5 mos. roughly). I was hoping I could avoid having to go through the trouble of spot feeding. It started to deflate and look sickly eventually, at which point I started to spot feed it a block of frozen mysis about once a week with a turkey baster (for probably 3 months now). I may be overfeeding it a little, but my one clowns is a little bit overzealous with his rubbing (knocks half the food out) and I have a few shrimp that like to steal easy meals. Also, the truth is I don't do a great job of keeping track of exactly when I feed it, so some weeks it probably gets 2x and some weeks probably none. I know I fed it 2 days ago.

As far as the possibility of stress, my params have been in order except for a little phosphate a couple weeks ago, and everything checked out fine tonight right before I did my weekly water change. Everything else in the tank is looking normal/really good, so my hope is that it just felt the need to "breed."