S. gigantea zoo transplant?

[WDLV]

Based on experience with other types of anemones, I cannot agree with the statement that feeding more than once weekly is not good for them... Unless that means feeding large chunks of food such as table shrimp.

In contrast I think that they should be fed small pieces of food at least once per day. I feed a mash to my fish consisting of small crustaceans such as cyclops, and mysid shrimp. Also included are blended table shrimp and fish. I think food of this size is appropriate for anemones. In fact, I do not feed my fish anymore. I feed my anemones this mash through a 60cc syringe and allow the fish to eat what falls out. My 6" magnifica usually consumes about 15cc of solid mass.
It always looks best a few hours after eating.

I realize this is not a gigantea, but I have found that all my anemones are pretty much the same in terms of eating preferences.

 

[skyrne_isk]

Walt, I completely agree on the feeding aspect. I imagine some new folks to the hobby will feed an anemone whatever it will fit in its mouth. I am certain the claim was this was harmful as they don't eat large food chunks daily in the wild. I will keep with the daily feedings. It's very peculiar that every day when I come home and feed the fish, the carpet clamps down on the smallest particle of food, even fish poo if that's all it can snag. This tells me it is in dire need of nutrition. I have fed it six tentacles so far in two days, and don't think I will stop daily feedings (but no more tentacles). I know anemones don't really know when to stop eating, but I keep it to small stuff like krill and mysis. With all the wrasses I have, it's a challenge to get it to be able to take its food down without getting poached. Shredded foods are just that much harder to keep the fish away from.

Thanks so much for your input so far.

Craig

 

[WDLV]

NP. Hope something helps.

 

[Greg 45]

I hate to ask this question. But here goes.
What are the water temps that you are keeping these
tanks at with the Gigantea's.
Thank You

 

[skyrne_isk]

Sure. Low temp ranges down to 79.9F at night and sometime ticks up to ~81.5F at it's hottest on those days when the AC doesn't keep up. The controller shuts off halides at 82.5F in case of A/C failure and the T5s off at 83.0F. This actually saved once when the wife didn't turn on the AC before she left for the day and temps got up to 78 in the house and the tank hit 82.7F.

 

[isseym328]

I got a purple gigantea and I keep my temp pretty low, 77 or under. When the temp got higher (around 80) earlier in the summer the carpet started moving around. I think there were other reasons why it was moving around, but temp was prob one of them.

 

[skyrne_isk]

Definitely worth a thought. I would think that these carpets, being shallow water dwellers would like warmer temps. I have seen a lot of these in the wild in shallow pools in silty water. We'll knock it down a degree and see how it goes. With local temps only in the low/mid 70's it won't be difficult.

Also, over the weekend I stumbled upon another gig at a LFS out of town. It's like my other yellow carpet pictured on the earlier page. There is someone here on RC who wanted one of mine and lives locally to me, but I can't remember who. Hopefully they'll read this and shoot me a pm.

Lastly, the final attempted transplant took place on saturday. I essentially gut loaded the krill with tentacle nubs stuck to my tweezers. I took plenty of photos and will post them shortly.

*fingers crossed*

 

[skyrne_isk]

It has worked! looking toward the center of the oral disk reveals little brown spots/patches of zoo clusters. it can be seen with the naked eye, but I need to get a hold of a macro lens and probably a higher mp camera too. I'll post shotscof how I gut loaded the krill with donor tissues when my ISP fixes their connection. I am on my iPhone now. the last feedind with transplanted tentacles was about two weeks ago. given I am almost at two months with both of these I already feel good...but this is just too sweet.

 

[skyrne_isk]

Okay, so here is the update about how I went about this:

Here I used the tweezers to remove some tentacles from the bright green carpet I have. Any time I feed that carpet, it pulls on the tweezers and latches on....pulling the tweezers away quickly takes the tentacles off the anemone. Here are three or four tentacles on the tweezers.

Here is the krill and the tentacles together

Here is one of the gut loaded krill....the green spots are inside the exoskeleton inserted above the tail.

This is a shot of the carpet just after the feeding of the last donor zoo....right as brown spots started to appear.

These shots show a decidedly brown tint beginning to take hold along the back edge....it has now spread enough that my camera picks it up (I think you can all see).

So obviously I cannot prove the carpet didn't absorb zoo from the water column that the green carpet may have released. However, I can say that a month went by of absolutely NO color (other than the pigments in the tips of the tentacles) and no color change to the bleached blue carpet. So all I have is a circumstantial case, but a pretty strong one I think about why the blue carpet has started coloring up. Is it unheard of to see a bleached anemone begin darkening after a month.....no. I am sure it has happened. But I am convinced this blue carpet was completely devoid of any zoo, the rest of you can make up your own minds, I am certainly not trying to do that for you.

After feeding donor tissue with known good zoo into the bleached carpet, two weeks later it has began darkening as the donated zoo has began taking hold. By no means am I out of the woods yet, but this is definitely encouraging. Every anemone I have seen COMPLETELY bleached I have never seen recover. Once the zoo is totally gone, it is gone until it is somehow reintroduced from an external source. I am completely stoked that this idea appears to be a valid approach to saving bleached nems.

I will keep updates posted so perhaps this helps some out there. Reculturing the zoo is relatively easy, and without much risk to the donor. It only took under a dozen tentacles all told....and given the small size of tentacles on gigs it was all but unnoticeable.

HTH!

 

[OrionN]

Great job. I am not sure if the transplant help but I don't think it hurt. Logically, I think it help because we are reasonably sure that anemone and clams anf likley coral intialy pick up zooanthella via ingestion it.

 

[WDLV]

I don't know either. I will say it was a creative approach and that if one has the means and need that it does not hurt to try it.
It would be more provable if the nems were in separate tanks but even then it is possible that the nem already had some zoanthellae in it's tissues.
All that said, I find it quite curious that the anemone started coloring up right around the same time that you conducted your experiment.

 

[OrionN]

The clam farmers ground up an larger clam to feed a patch of babies to get them to have zooxanthellae. This is essentially the same except that we don't have to ground up an anemone to do it

 

[skyrne_isk]

Walt, that is basically my take. To have a whole month go by with nothing but stark whiteness with no change in the lack of color until a couple weeks after implanting the zoo.....is pretty convincing to me, but not definitive as the system was shared. The brown coloration is spreading throughout....it basically is spreading as a series of brown spots that start to fill in.

I am wondering how the non-photosynthetic pigments are created.....surely the nems have a mechanism for creating these pigments, right? I am wondering what the final color of this guy will be. It does not appear the purple tone it originally had is coming back....but it's probably too early to call.

Again, I am just happy that a bleached but otherwise healthy specimen appears to be on the fix. It was ironic that I had a gig that would feed and survived acclimation but ultimately doomed due to its bleached condition.

 

[Gary Majchrzak]

keep feeding chopped up krill

 

[OrionN]

Gary,
How is your anemone doing? were you able to remove the angel?

 

[tufacody]

Kudos for the beginning of recovery, however I really don't think that a month w/o seeing improvement in a bleached nem is really that long of a time. In fact, I'd say that 4-8 weeks under proper lighting is about what you would expect for signs of recovery. In any event, the procedure is certainly intriguing and worth the investigation. I hope it makes a full recovery!

 

[skyrne_isk]

No disagreement here, tufa. In the case of the yellow carpet, I think it took maybe a week or two to begin losing the neon coloration that accompanies bleaching as the zoo started to repopulate. The thing that worried me on this blue carpet was the loss of body mass. The thing was noticeably shrinking week after week. For the record, it gets daily feedings of 2 full-sized krill (chopped up). After about four weeks, with no color change I was officially nervous. But sure, it could have taken 4-8 weeks for coloration to begin to improve.....but it looked completely bleached (again, if that is possible).

But I am stoked that this reculturing appears to be simple. My next step with this will be to find a bleached nem (like a BTA) from a LFS and see if culturing can be done interspecies in a controlled setting.....

But one at a time, eh?

 

[Gary Majchrzak]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15755027#post15755027 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by OrionN
Gary,
How is your anemone doing? were you able to remove the angel?

PMing you so we don't derail this thread

 

[skyrne_isk]

Update:

Daily feedings of 2-3 krill per day......here's where we are at the moment. See how the color has started to spread from the back edge in the middle of the carpet toward the front. One thing to note is that it seems to shrink down when feedings occur during the day - almost as if it senses the mysis in the water column and attempts to "feed" - though there is no food items present. Placing food on the tentacles alleviates this every time. Weird.

A month and some change back:

A couple weeks ago, starting to get color:

Today:

 

[clowns101]

Looking good!