Sea Cucumber Fission

[Vitaly]

I have a 12" sea cucumber, Tiger Tail I believe. I have read that certain species will reproduce asexually via fission.

I even found a study where the authors experimented with inducing fission by placing rubberbands around the cukes.

<B>Mariculture of sea cucumber in the Red Sea - the Egyptian experience</B>
<I>Howaida R. Gabr, Ashraf I. Ahmed, Mahmoud H. Hanafy, et. al</I>
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But the survival rate was not too great, approximately 50% for larger individuals.

My question is...<U>has anybody actually observed their cucumber divide in their tank?</U> Mine is becoming so large that I worry that I may need to remove him from my tank. If your cuke has divided, how large was it at the time of division and was there anything that precipited the fission?

Thanks.

 

[matter1331]

A guy in my local group from DFW reported his splitting. The groups website is DFWMAS.org, his name on the board is Ashlar. I'm pretty sure he posts on here too, probably under the same name.

 

[WI Reef Lover]

I have actually had one of my cucumbers split in my tank. i do believe mine is a tiger tail too but not really sure on the exact species. I can't really say that there were any signs that it was going to happen. The only thing that i can say is that i had not seen him in quite a few weeks before it happened. I found him again accidentally while i was relandscaping my tank. I picked up a dead piece of red pipe organ coral that i had in my tank and discovered that instead of 1 i now had 2. At first I thought I had accidentally torn him in half and then realized that he had split. The rock was burried at the bottom of my tank quite hidden. As a general rule I could always catch sight of him until that few weeks where I didn't see him at all, now he has a friend.
He really wasn't all that big when he split either, I'd guess when he was fully inflated i guess would be the word he was about 6 inches long. I'm not sure I could even venture to guess why he did it, I'm far from an expert. At the time my tank temperature was probably at about 80 degrees all the time (a bit high I know) I have since brought that temp so it averages around 78 degrees all the time. I don't know if that had anything to do with it (although it might have something to do with my hair algae problem). My lights are usually on about 12 hours a day (again probably a bit too long per day). Perhaps somewhere in my mistakes I somehow created the right conditions for the cucumber to do this. I had read about it but never expected it to happen. I was adding coral accel to my tank at the time but I don't think that would really have anything to do with it.

I have a few other cukes in my tank one of a simialr variety but a different color and a couple of the type that feed by little feathery tentacles but none of them have split. i also have 2 others in a larger tank that is fish only and neither one of them has split either, although I must admit that one of them I have not seen for a couple of weeks so who knows.