Ron Popeils Anemone Reproduction System!

Ron Popeil

Ron Popeil

Love them clownfish.
this system started out in the planning stages the moment flighty and phender began cutting their anemones into pieces and sharing their success. i had always wanted to start doing something for the hobby on a grand scale for the sake of conservation. important as well was to try something new and uncharted in hopes the rewards would be worth the risks. while anemone cutting isnt a new phenomenon, bubble tips are manually reproduced with some regularity, magnifica anemones seem to show great promise in this regard. my goal is to come up with a system of steps that is replicable, that the hobby can benefit from and a small but growing population of captive produced heteractis magnificas can become increasingly more readily available. sounds great on paper.

the obstacles i had was a lack of extra expendable income, space and an understanding and sympathetic girlfriend.

i conquered all of these except the last one.

i had dozens of tank ideas rumbling around in my head, but struggled to come up with a reasonable structure. one seemed to determine the other. i was trying to find all my tanks used and second hand to keep costs down, and unfortunately starting collecting an assortment of sizes and makes of aquariums in my garage. this made planning more difficult as i had hoped to have some uniformity in my tank sizes. fortunately, a friend was selling three tanks and a sump hed gotten from a closing fish store and they ended up being just what i was looking for.

two of them are 48" long x 18" deep x 12" tall.
one, divided in half is 48" long x 12" deep x 13" tall
the sump is 48" long x 36" wide x 14" tall
40 gallon breeder refugium.

with them secured, i purchased a rack system that would hold 2000 lbs per shelf. i painted three coats of water proof sealant on each side of three pieces of plywood. i opened up the overflows from 1" to 1.5" on each tank. i went with a ding and dented sunlight supply 8 bulb T5 agriculture light and cut it in half. four bulbs now hang above each tank. a dual 175w metal halide is suspended above the small of the three. a 40 gallon breeder is my refugium, which when established should house some less commonly available macoralgae.
i received a very large dual sedra 9000 powered DIY deltec knock off protein skimmer, which when finally hooked up should really rock.
the entire system is powered by a reeflo snapperesque pump that i unfortunately had to throttle down for each tank. i believe due to my plumbing design not enough water can drain back into the sump, forcing the tanks to fill more than they drain. but for now my flow is sufficient.
i installed several unused ballvalves for future needs. maybe an additional media reactor, calcium reactor and skimmer feed.

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the top two tanks are mainly going to be for housing two or more (if divided) species of my favorite clownfish species. akindynos, chrysopterus or tricinctus. if i can get some spawning pairs, i will definitely be pursuing some rearing. the lower tank with the halides is where i will i will keep my anemone cuttings. if there seems to be promise, ill switch out the T5s for halides and use the larger tanks for the clones. one side will be for bubble tip anemones, the other side of magnificas.

the main problem i forsee are with nematocysts causing problems between species after cuttings, maybe before. the other problems im excited to discover as this project advances. i have three magnificas on deck to cut as soon as i feel the system is ready to handle them, and they have adapted to the system. this project is certainly in its fledgling stage but am almost ready to get started.

any and all suggestions are welcome, im willing to try anything with this.

thank you for the help!
 
That's exciting Ron. I think you'll find that T-5 is more is fine for the job. I've had mine under T-5s for a just over a month and they haven't moved a cm, are sticky and hungry, and look fine. As far as nematocysts, that will will a concern--not for the other mags, but for the BTAs. I'm sure after cutting them you will bathe them in tank water and allow most of the slime release to wash off. I assume running activated carbon, purigen and wet skimming should diminish the impact of nematocyst shed.

Looking forward to pics and reports on your progress. Wish you the best with this project.
 
I would not try BTA's and Mags in the same system. They dont need the additional stress (over and above the cutting itself). I would also stick with higher lighting. They take time to recover after being cut so patience is key here. They wont feed while recovering so would need more light. Make sure you rinse them well after cutting before placing them in the system. Agree with overskimming and running carbon. If you stick with one species you should not have too much of a problem. Good luck and looking forward to the pics. Ps: try get ones that have the 'split' gene - they handle bing cut much better than ones that have not split before.
 
excellent suggestions. thank you very much.

here are some pictures of an anemone you may not see very often. this was acclimated to the system on thursday of last week. it spent the first two days tumbling around not attaching to anything. upon arrival, the anemone seemed starved and bit more bleached than i would have liked. since then, ive had several bouts of concern and remorse, but the anemone has never deflated and always kept a tight mouth. winwood and the guys over at reefhotspot both assured me how tough this species is...so at this point im pretty sure itll be just fine. with great purple color verrucae and a delightful golden yellow color on the tentacles, im very excited to see how this anemone develops. this has been the first time ive ever seen this species of carpet, let alone own one...so its all very new to me.

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Mertens - nice ! Pretty hardy in fact and a good candidate for cutting (although I do not advise that). Perhaps in a year or so when it is more established and bigger. Love them, congrats and good luck !
 
Are you really going to cut a mertensii in half? Do you know what happened when Phender did this? You are aware that this species in not known to split naturally, right?
 
Nice set up!
Are you going to focus on certain genus or species? Are all three tanks connected to the same system? Would you be able to isolate each tank if needed?

I think the one that is going to housing newly divided specimens should have a shut off valve so that if you needed to do medical treatments, you could isolate that tank from the other 2 tanks. For the first few days, I found that flow also has been an important factor in caring for newly divided animals. In-tank pumps and power heads just don't work with newly unattached anemones for me. Also, it is easier to control water quality when extra feedings are done for the new daughter cells.

If you are interesting in sexual reproduction system, you may need to add a larvae collection / housing /grow out compartments to you set up. Over all, looks good to me:)
Good luck!
 
Ron Popeil said:
no no no. the mertensii is for me. not for cutting.
Click to expand...

Ow thank goodness! You had me worried there for a minute.:lol: I should have known better.

You're probably planning this, but I'll mention it anyway. I wouldn't cut all three mags at the same time. I'd cut one first. You may learn something from the experience that you can carry over to the second one.
 
Is there beer waiting for me when I come watch the first cutting? Glad to see things are coming along! You still pleased with the pump performace?
 
hello everyone. so this system has been set up for some time now. ive added a skimmer im pleased with, a calcium reactor to regulate water parameters, water top off to maintain stable salinity and run carbon monthly. here are some of the problems and successes ive experienced:

- mertens, like the haddonis ive had in the past, react negatively to magnificas. the mertens, though bleached, was doing great for the several weeks i had it. i decided to move over two of my largest and nonfavorite magnificas over to the system and get them prepped for their cuttings. almost immediately, the mertens began to deflate. the magnificas were placed in the smaller cubes down below under the 175w halide. they too seemed to not expand as large as they had under my 400w halides in my main system. but they never deflated.
the mertens would continue to go through periods of deflation, inflation, mouth open, mouth tight. but it never appeared to be dying. its been two months now and while the mertens has not regained zooxanthellae or increased in size, its never continued to decline like a dying anemone. just a steady phase of looking awful and fine, it just wont give up. i moved it over to my main system to see if it would improve. although it also has three other magnificas and a crispa in it. we'll see.

- bubble tips anemones detach and drift. in the bubble tip section of the system, also under a 175w lamp, the half a dozen rose and green BTAs i have huddle close to a rubble pile. however, many of them will periodically detach and float around the system. could this be an over crowding issue? i plan on increasing rockwork and give them more real estate to attach to.

- bubble tip anemones lose their color and tentacles shrink...some of them. over time the RBTAs will shrink in size as do their tentacles. the brilliant red will fade to a dull red. GBTAs turn brownish. now the lamps im using above the anemones are an ebay brand and i have no experience with them. i bought them from a fellow reefer. could this be the cause?

SUCCESSES
i cut one of my roses using a brand new knife and plastic cutting board. the two anemone halves look great. dont deflate, and havent experienced the shrinking phenomenon the others have. im not worried about being successful with the bubble tips, theyre pretty bullet proof as ill explain next, but i do enjoy looking forward to producing many more clones.

rose bubble tips can survive overnight in a car during 32 degree weather. this may not make sense to anyone, but i had four roses in a zip lock bag...and accidentally forgot about them. i expected the bag to be a block of ice the following morning, but it wasnt. it was very very cold though. i didnt bother testing the temp or acclimating them after their 24 hours in the bag, i just immediately put them in their tank and they are doing great. bullet proof.

so altogether i have some things to figure out before i really get into cuttings. especially with the magnificas. i can suspect some alleopathy, but im not entirely convinced. perhaps ill change out the 175w bulbs for a name brand and see if that improves things.

suggestions? ideas?
 
I've never had a carpet and magnifica in the same system, so I can't speak to that. However, I have kept mags and BTAs together (and currently do) with no incidence of movement or detrimental effects for either species.
 
BTA's are fickle about bright lighting. If you give them enough rockwork, when the light is too bright they will hunker down into the rocks. Without the rockwork they will try to move, and may detach. Don't forget they are relatively low light (for anemone) creatures. Once they adjust to the lighting they will probably be fine - but they will not like the lighting that is necessary to keep magnificas.

If you want to keep them under metal halides, I would recommend going as high as possible on the color temp. If you aren't using 20K bulbs, try those first. Otherwise, consider flourescents.

Personally, I'd keep two separate systems if I were trying to aquaculture two species. There are too many variables if you keep both species in the same system, and if you have problems you will never be able to eliminate all the variables because you will have other (very different) critters in the same system that may be impacting results. Once you start cutting these guys all bets are off because they will be releasing all kinds of body fluids and possible stress-related defense chemicals into the water. Even bits of injured body parts (mysenterial filaments, for example) may be released into the water unless you are really finely filtering your water.

If I were doing this, I would have one system (bare bottom) completely dedicated to one species, with a LR sump and would run ozone and UV. I would also use fine mechanical filtration like carbon.
 
thank you very much for the input. yes, separate systems would be nice. and ultimately, i may adjust my system for that purpose. the magnificas are in a bare bottom system, the BTAs are barebottom as well, just with large pieces of rock rubble. only the top tier systems have substrate, and barely an inch at most.

there is a wholesaler who swears by the merits of ozone in his anemone holding system. what do you think this does for anemone specific environments?
 
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