I am ok with fragging experiments but sharp razor blades would be better, seeing if you can frag in the show tank is sketchy not only for the anemone but for what it may do to the other coral. For example, I fragged a large hairy mushroom in a small tank with scissors. Thought that would be easy but instead of fragging it was torn to ribbons. Slime and white weird stuff floated everywhere, and the coral that could captured the white particles with their tentacles. A week later they were dead. Now that is not emperical science but it's good enough for me-don't frag in the display. Whether it is bad for the main animal or the others I don't care.
2nd. Don't experiment with rare and possibly endanged species, or if you do think about not posting that kind of stuff til you can prove it is not cruel and deadly. What if PETA people see this thread, how's that gonna look? You think they need more ammo? Try Majanos, tulips, or some other anemone. And don't try condylactis. Just because they are cheap doesn't mean they have no value in the wild. The intrinsic value of all our creatures save maybe those with medicinal properties is nil, but in the reef they have their place. I have a real bug up my !@$ about people treating condies like dirt. Stores should stop ordering them really.
3rd: the affects of salinity changes is a good thing to investigate. Properly and with controls, in the sort of protocol a real experiment would require. Anemone deaths are often blamed on salinity changes but is their empirical proof? Test on a healthy animal though, and again not a rare/endangered one.
4th testing the point of destruction for an animal is wrong period. Testing the point of an RBTA seems odd in general as we have been successfully killing them at all levels of the hobby for decades now. What we need to know is what is the true standard of care? Since some of us keep them in nanos and under flourescents with success does that mean they are ok that way? There is a good experiment-take your 4 clones once they have healed and put them in a flow through system with 4 small tanks or cubicles. Each should have a different light typical of the hobby-VHO, PC, T5, halide. I would love to see the results of that! Do a NO flourescent too, just for fun.
Last off I love your other experiments dude. You didn't open a can of worms here, you opened a can of whoopass. Sorry it's like that. Some people view coral as "specimens" similar to plants or rocks, others see them as precious endanged fixtures of a sacred ecosystem, and still more see them as cute pets which they may even try to name and anthropomorphize over. If you don't view the coral as animals worthy of benign care at least back off on the live animal experiments til they are well conceived and checked with others for redundancy to established data, and publish at the end of the process. Most scientists do that right? No sense projecting a hypothesis into the community til you know if it's worthy of consideration.
Seriously would love you to do that light experiment on the 4 assuming they live. Am interested in the osmotic shock results too since you already did it but it would have been better on a healthy intact specimen. We won't know if the salinity change killed it or if this particular cutting was especially harmed in the process of fragging. If you could do the light experiment it would be fun to follow that up with one on various corals and especially ricordea... which it seems EVERYONE has a different opinion on as far as the use of halides goes.
You are going to get slammed on this for a while, for various reasons. Don't quit the list but take it as a lesson learned. Animal science and physics don't quite match up and those who do animal science have a real hard set of animal welfare rules to follow, which you may be able to obtain through your university. So many of us do what you have done but wouldn't admit it to the group. So maybe we don't hack up anemones, we do mix leathers with SPS or put aggressive fish with those they will kill, thinking "maybe it will be ok". My least favorite quote at the fish store after telling a person not to combine two incompatible critters:
"I JUST WANT TO TRY!"
You wouldn't believe how often people say that, I bet all of us are guilty of this. Maybe we don't do it anymore because we learned our lesson but unfortunately most people do learn not to touch a hot stove by getting burned.
Kate
