H.magnifica splitting?

[sonofgaladriel]

Congratulations on the successful split! I hope they both do well for you.
However, I have a nice home for it should it not behave in your tank!

 

[maxxII]

I had my Magnifica divided three times and end up with 4 clones. One somewhat bleached due to lack of space. I gave a way three and the one I keep died in a tank crash. This was many years ago. I think if you have a large and healthy enough H. magnifica, give it a little stress and it would divide. One of my three division was stressed induce when I first bought him home from the LFS. The other two times did come after large water change and they was exposed to air. I had a 450 g tank at the time and change 200 g at a time.

Your anemone looks great. It is nice when this happen without have to cut the anemone.

Thanks Minh. I was hoping you'd see this and give me your take on things. I do weekly water changes of 45-50 gallons or so, which is about 20% of my system volume, but the anemone is not exposed to air when I do it.

Congratulations on the successful split! I hope they both do well for you.
However, I have a nice home for it should it not behave in your tank!

Thanks, I appreciate it. I know you've been looking for a healthy H.magnifica for awhile now. If the clone ends up being "fraggable" rest assured, I'll contact you and we'll figure something out.

IIRC you've got a 450 cube tank set up that you've been looking for a centerpiece anemone for awhile now, (5 years or so?).

Nick

 

[maxxII]

Was able to feed the smaller clone today. It took awhile for it to engulf the food, (Scallop strip), but that's not surprising to me since it just split and that took an enormous amount of energy from it.

While feeding it, I was able to see the area where the split occurred, and take a single useful picture.

You can see the whitish area where the anemone is healing from the split. I've seen E.quads split before, but I dont recall the newly healed areas looking quite like this...
Its probably due to the brown base of the anemone accentuating the whitish color...

But I thought it was neat.

Nick

 

[garygb]

Good documentation for a rare occurrence. Best of luck with both clones.

 

[MarinaP]

Congrats Mine split for the previous owner once. It has not done that for me in 7 years.

 

[maxxII]

Thanks guys!
I generally try to document as much as possible so that others can see what's going on and learn from my mistakes or explain what's really going on,(as opposed to what I think is going on).

Marina, I have no idea what induced the anemone to split. It wasnt very large by Ritteri standards since it was slightly less than 12 inches in diameter. I dont feed it heavy in order to keep its size at a managable level for my system.

I didnt have anything unusual occur water chemistry wise that would have stressed it out, and none of the other anemones in the system showed any signs of stress either, ( another H.magnifica about the same size in the 58 that's been with me for about year, a 6 inch H.malu I've had for 5 years in with it, 2 E. quadricolors I've had for about a year, and two S.tapetum anemones I've had for about a year).

Fish are fine, SPS are still growing, clams are still growing, this Nem just decided to split for some reason.

Nick

 

[twiggyb]

How are the mags doing Nick?

 

[maxxII]

Doing good. They've moved closer together. The daughter is a little larger than half the size of the Mother. I'm calling the anemone's Mother/daughter based solely on size.

Mother is approx 7-8 inches in diameter, daughter is approx 5 inches in diameter. Tentacles have lengthened, and are now back to about 2.5 - 3 inches in length. Daughter anemone still has whitish "scar" tissue on the side. I'm assuming the mother does as well, b ut I just cant see it.

I need to take some more pictures and post them up. Will try to do that tonight.

Nick

 

[houser]

Nick - fantastic documentation! I recall an Aussie guy a while back documenting his split, nice to see another in pics. I'm hoping some day mine decides to split as well, but I won't lose sleep waiting!

 

[maxxII]

Some updated pics as of last night.
Due to the location of the daughter anemone, its very difficult to get decent shots...

The area of the split is still discolored, but is getting smaller. Its been about 2 months since the split finished.

Full tank shot

Nick

 

[shred5]

Very nice. Really a pretty and healthy H. magnifica. Keep us posted on it's progress.