Ritteri anenomes- should they be collected?

[Ooulophilia]

I questioned the collection of these anenomes for many years seeing the morts that show up at LFS. After that, working at an LFS for a few years I would go the wholesalers in LA every week try and pick out healthy anenomes, but maybe 1 in 30 did not have a tear in its foot. I would bring in long tentacle anenomes and bubble tips as they seem to be able to heal from this with good water contions, good light and feeding, but the Ritteri seemed to be doomed to die a slow death with even the smallest tear. Every now and then I would find a good specimen and sometimes under the right conditions(400W halide, ect..) it would do well, sometimes not. I have learned a lot since then.

I see people on this forum congratulating people for finding a healthy ritteri. Is that worth the hundreds that are morted for one or two healthy ones?. It reminds me of when you would see hundreds of moorish idols at the wholesalers - one or two would survive - we got away from that mindset with fish - can't we with inverts?

[traveller7]

[moved]

[TheVillageIdiot]

Is there any established or is anyone attempting to establish an aqua cultured or captive bred (not sure about the terminology) anemone farm?

I have heard it said that anemones may live for hundred(s) of years in the wild.

I'm interested in peoples' responses to your questions.

[GreshamH]

One of the only ones we can't do AC is Ritteri. I feel the same was as Ooulophylia on this one. I've imported my fair share, and the ODA/DAA rate is outa this world.

[Flighty]

I am working on propagating them. I know it is a long road, but any information we can gain is a step in the right direction. I currently have two splits off of a parent magnifica in my tank which are doing pretty well. The parent had been in another reefers tank for 7 years before some tank problems and a rock slide caused it to split into three.

I will be visiting Fiji soon and hope to learn more about how these anemones live in the wild and are collected. I will attempt to arrange bringing some magnificas back or having them shipped to me so I can have healthy specimens to study.

We have set up a system with 625gallons and have extra high flow and light tanks to begin manually splitting magnificas and investigating sexual propagation after we have several healthy anemones to work with.

I do not think this is an impossible species, but the way we are collecting and shipping them now is having dismal results. It is probably worse than most people admit because so few people know what signs a sick magnifica shows and few people realise that it can take 6 or more months for them to die from the internal damage sustained in collection and shipping.

Anyway, sorry for the rambling post. I would love to hear from anyone who has looked into aqua culturing these guys in the past.

[TheVillageIdiot]

Cindy,

thanks for posting, i hope you are successful in your venture!

[Flighty]

Me too :) I am pretty optimistic about it but I do recognise that if it was easy it probably would have been done by now. I do have the advantage of doing it out of curiosity rather than seeking a profit and, being just a hobbyist, I have the luxury of time which may researchers are short on when they are trying to push results out.

[dantodd]

have you considered trying to frag them? Seems pretty risky since tears during collection/transit are so damning to their survival.

[Flighty]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7997477#post7997477 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by dantodd
have you considered trying to frag them? Seems pretty risky since tears during collection/transit are so damning to their survival. That is what I mean when I say manually splitting. I personally don't think that the tears are the real killer, but tears are external evidence of rough collection which probably often coincides with other very detrimental collection and shipping issues. These anemones split in the wild and occasionally in our tanks, so I am fairly confident that having a healthy stable specimen to start with is the missing key to this.

Since it generally takes a year or so to be sure a magnifica has recovered from the trip from the ocean to our tanks and since so few make it, there is a pretty daunting time and resource barrier before you have something that I would try fragging. That is why I am setting myself up to be able to have several magnificas to try this with without sacrificing my show piece to an unknown procedure.

Of course, the optimum experiment would be to go to the tropics and try fragging them in the ocean first. If anyone has some grant money they need to get rid of, let me know :)

[dantodd]

sorry about that. Somehow I managed to think you were only looking into sexual reproduction. It's just a matter of my poor reading skills, not that you were in any way ambiguous.