The Freakish RBTA Splitting Fiesta

[saltyunderground]

About 4-5 weeks ago I complained on here that my RBTA had not split in the 6-8 months since I had it. The next day it split.

I have not fed either of the two anemones for a couple of weeks. Today as I consider it's time to feed them I notice that there are 5 or 6 RBTA all on one rock. They are not done splitting apart yet so it's hard to say how many I will have. It appears at least 5 will be there.

Wacky.

(Sorry, none of these are for sale.)

 

[dphins]

Where's the pics?

 

[saltyunderground]

I am waiting for three of the new ones to come out from under the rock. One is in front of the rock and one is behind the rock. I can't get them all in a pic right now.

 

[Dert42]

can i buy... oh.


sounds like you're doing something right!
what do you feed them?

 

[saltyunderground]

They were spitting out the silversides so I I started soaking large pieces of freeze dried krill in Vita Chem. They love that obvisouly.

 

[dynamitedj]

I can't get my rtba to split . It is starting to take over the rt. side of my tank and is at least 8 inches wide when inflated. I'm very hesitant to feed it. I'm only asking because you are having luck splitting. Do you think I should feed it more to make it split?

 

[saltyunderground]

I can't say why mine suddenly started splitting. But I think that they need energy to split. So I'd say feed it once a week something like krill or silversides.

The funny thing is that the orginal anemone is still big like yours. The first clone start out smaller and got bigger pretty fast. It split at just about a month in age. It was not a case where I got two medium sized anemones from the one big one.

I am going to sell the large ones and keep two small ones.

I have MH lights. I wonder if light is a factor?

 

[dynamitedj]

Hmm. That's odd. Well at least my clown is happy. I was hoping that it's size would change but it doesn't sound like that is the case.

 

[saltyunderground]

The clones are generated from a small section of the tenticles to the mouth of the "mother". They sort of glob off from the side and detach from the mother over about 24 hours +/-. So there is still the majority of the mother left. The tenticles that it lost to the clone grow back very quickly.

 

[MayoBoy]

Lisa,

You better reconsider selling some of those before you end up with this:

 

[Shooter7]

How do you get 'em out? I mean, mine split but both of them now have their feet anchored deep underneath of my rock. I'd have to take apart half my reef just to get to either one of them.

 

[saltyunderground]

It's hard to get them to let go. I take a large metal tweezer with dull tips and dig under the foot. It starts to let go and I just keep working at it. If I have to, I lift the part of the rock that the foot is attached to out of the water while I work on it. The anemone gets irritated by this and starts to let go.

dynamitedj, here's a pick of the mother anemone this morning. You can see on the bottom that there are short tenticle stubs starting to grow back from where the clone broke off. The clone on the top of the pick came from the first split clone. The new clone off the mother is under the rock with another clone. The original clone is behind this rock. Confusing huh?

 

[saltyunderground]

Mayo Boy, I think I might be afraid to put my hand in that tank.