Zooxanthellae Transplant for Bleached Anemones

[OrionN]

T the 2 weeks mark, I start to see/imagine dirty tentacles on the anemone. These two pictures taken this AM before I leave for work. He is eating well.

 

[Pastey]

For clarification, you harvested the zooaxanthellae by simply plucking a tentacle from a healthy "donor"?

 

[shred5]

Uptake and Persistence of Homologous and Heterologous Zooxanthellae in the Temperate Sea Anemone Cereus pedunculatus (Pennant)

http://biostor.org/reference/10788

 

[OrionN]

For clarification, you harvested the zooaxanthellae by simply plucking a tentacle from a healthy "donor"?

Yes. With larger anemones, I feed them larger piece of food and able to put several tentacles inside the food. For this anemone, I was only able to cramp in one single tentacle.
I expect the zooxanthellae to return fully within the next 4 weeks

 

[Pastey]

If you don't mind my asking, how did you remove the tentacle from the donor? Razor, quick tug? I don't currently have any anemones but I am fascinated by this.

 

[OrionN]

For carpets, it is easy, just stick your finger to the anemone and you will end up with several as you pull it out. For other species of anemone that are not as sticky, just grasp it with anything, I imagine a pair of tweezers will do just fine.

 

[blando233]

So i have BT anem that split awhile ago. Now one of them was hiding a lot and i think lost its Zooxanthellae because it is white now and he is kind of small. I been feeding him shrimp every other day or so but still white. I called my LFS about the transplant but they thought i was crazy and never heard of it. Any suggestions by chance?

 

[OrionN]

Almost 3 weeks and no sign of zooxanthellae return yet.

 

[OrionN]

Almost 4 weeks. Just now see some dirty looking tentacles. Not enough to show in a picture yet but I am optimistic. This seem to take a lot longer than other people experience and more than twice as long as my last transplant.

 

[Irishdolphin]

Great thread - look forward to photos

 

[akida]

Almost 4 weeks. Just now see some dirty looking tentacles. Not enough to show in a picture yet but I am optimistic. This seem to take a lot longer than other people experience and more than twice as long as my last transplant.

I had/have a very bleached green gig when I purchased it. It's been eating well however these past couple weeks the tentacles look as you say "dirty". I'm assuming that is a sign of new zoxanthellea? That term fits it well too. I glanced over and thought I was imaging things. It's not the brown you see on healthy gigs, it's like a patch of tentacles are dirty brown.

 

[PfenWendt]

Any update on your nem? I may have to try this for my bleached nem and see how it goes. Maybe yours is taking longer than your last one as result of only being able to get 1 tentacle in the food? just a thought

 

[OrionN]

It did not take. Still bleached. I got really busy and just keep on feeding him with fish food. I barely a few minutes for the tank every day.
I will redo transplant this weekend (or next weekend). I have some idea as to why it did not work and will write down what I think in detail when I get around to it, when I try to document the transplant again.

 

[jake2045]

Any updates?

 

[OrionN]

I got really busy and did not post much lately. I did another transplant about 2 weeks ago but did not document this procedure this time. It is essentially as I documented before. Two weeks later, the zooxanthallea start to come back. I took this picture just now to show an area of the tentacles start to "look dirty"

 

[OrionN]

Why did this second transplant works while the first time it did not? Thinking about it, I have several thought:
Unlikely but some people may said that the zooxanthellae just comeback regardless of what I do. Now that I got this out, I cannot outright reject this but the timing of recovery make this unlikely.

There are several things I did the that may cause the first procedure from working:
I took too long and worry to much about documented it and the result of this is that the donor tentacles got dry out a bit. In addition to this, I thaw out the salmon with RO water. It is still wet then I tried to insert the donor tentacles into it. The combination of increase salinity from drying out and then decrease salinity from RO water may have do in the Zooxanthellae so that none was alive when the bleached anemone ingest them.

So word of advice's: don't let the donor tissue dry out even if a little bit and make sure you thaw the food with tank water instead of RO

Over all I am happy with the recovery of my anemone. Now that he is about to become un-Bleached, I think he will be just fine.

 

[Eric Dumont]

Wow really impressive !!
Did you experiment with a donor of another species?
Like LPS?

good job!!
continue to document

 

[ThRoewer]

This is how I do it, forced contact with other anemones of the same or similar species:

The two on the bottom where bleached when I got them.

In the past contact with a dark brown anthelia has worked too.

 

[OrionN]

Wow really impressive !!
Did you experiment with a donor of another species?
Like LPS?

good job!!
continue to document

I did not since I got multiple Gigantea to choose from

 

[Bajie]

Stupid question so apologies in advance as it just popped into my head

If the anemone was originally, say green, and got bleached, when you transplant the zooxanthalae would it become the colour of the donor anemone eg purple?

EDIT : Re-read thread and got answer.