Guide to fraging RTBA

[spongebob lover]

I started in electrical engineering, then swapped to civil engineering, took the senior level courses and got bored with the major, switched to mechanical engineering, took most of the jounior and senior level courses, stopped when I got an internship with Endyn (Energy Dynamics in ft.worth texas) for race engine design (life time passion), got back into college as an industrial engineer, finished up the entire set of fluid and thermodynamics, took the entire offered physics set (I love physics). At this point my girlfriend graduated from the college we were attending in Oregon and got stationed for her unpaid medical intership at UW medical center. I quit that college in Oregon when we moved, and started back in industrial engineering here in Seattle.

I have no degrees, and the engineering company I work for is baised in Tiawan. I specialize in connecting rod design and stress dynamics and intake manifold design on a job by job basis. We make some really kick ass parts that are re-sold under a wide variety of brand names. If you own a honda/toyota/nissan with a few basic performance mods, odds are my bosses company made at least something on your car. We also make all subaru STi camshafts currently, but I'm not really suposed to discuss that stuff.

I pay for school, my racecars, my RC helocopters, my chem experiments, my laser projects, my tesla coil hobby, and my Girlfriend while she is on her unpaid medical intership, and the reef thing on the side.

lol !!! you remind me my cousin who wanted to be a teacher, then he changed his mind and went to fire fighter, then to cop, then into Marketing and now he's studing law because he wants to be a detective since he works for a private company in Canada as a security guard .
I think you have a lot of hobbys and may be you should cut a little bit if you want more in reef keeping... just my opinion dood.

 

[MarineTeng]

Hi,
Wish I knew how to quote in my replies like you guys.

here's how you do it, push the button at the bottom or type

text here
[ /QUOTE] except with no space between the [/

 

[liveforphysics]

Kate- thank you, I respect you, I like you, and I didnt take it personally. Since the market demand is higher for RTBAs than I would be able to contribute to natural propagation, this method ensures that more RTBAs stay on the reef. If you dont think thats morally right, than we will simply have to agree to dissagree, but I still respect you.

Spongebob- I was scared when I first tried fragging corals as well. I used to just cut mushrooms in half, and then I worried about them constantly, and I was scared to frag much anything else. After seeing that each little chunk always turns into a new and healthy animal that rapidly grows back to full size, I started to get over the fear and began to really enjoy the idea of fragging enough corals that I could supply the LFSs with frags that dont require the rapeing of natual reefs. Having your hobby pay for itself also never hurts when you are on a college budget. I liked the idea of provideing cultured eco-friendly corals that I setup a dedicated frag tank in my liveing room to replace my cichlid tank (I think a few members have seen them). If everybody were to setup a frag tank or two, it would REALLY help natural reefs a LOT. It also lowers the cost of the hobby for everyone.

BTW, totally off topic, but in that pic writeme43 posted of my 30gal breeder, you can see the giant sebae taking up about half of the front of the tank. My percs were very sad to see it go, but they jumped right in one of Mikes RTBAs within about 5mins of me takeing the sebae out of the tank.

 

[Aquatic Guru]

Gees..it took me like 45 min to read everything. Well....one thing I can say Luke is that I'm glad that those anemones aren't dead and good luck on your success. BUT.....the way I looked at it, anemones are animals and so are clownfishes. I consider them equal. I just figure....cutting an anemone is like cutting a clownfish. Doesn't sound too pleasant to me. Whatever I just said won't change your mind on how you do things, but that's just my point of view.

 

[MarineTeng]

i disagree with aquatic guru since cutting up a clownfish gives it no chance to live while cutting an anemone strategically allows it to multiply, which is quite the opposite of dying, i'm not sure if i agree with all the experiment or not though, but if something heals it quicker i'd use that

 

[Aquatic Guru]

i disagree with aquatic guru since cutting up a clownfish gives it no chance to live while cutting an anemone strategically allows it to multiply, which is quite the opposite of dying, i'm not sure if i agree with all the experiment or not though, but if something heals it quicker i'd use that

That's cool.....but let's just say that fragging a clownfish was possible, would you try it?

 

[liveforphysics]

If it was fragging for no reason, or just to have a big pile of them or something, then I would say its no good. I am fragging to prevent them from being stripped off the reef. If fragging a fish was possible, and lets say over a year it prevented 100 fish from being imported and sold in petstores, which means about 400-900 (only 10-60% of wild captured fish live the journey to the pet store) native fish DIED to stock those 100 in the store, then I would hope anyone would make the same choice. I know I would suffer any trama to save a group of people(i hope anyone would in the right situation). This is just accelerating a process that they do on there own anyways. If you saw the slide show, they hook on a sharp spot and drag themselves apart untill they tear down the middle and leave themselves with a nasty jagged looking seam. Thats natural reproduction, hell, i would personally much rather be cut apart than ripped in half.


For all the guys that wana play the moral card with this, where did you get the animals in your tank?

Aquatic Guru- Was your cute goby in your picture tank raised? Or were 3-9 gobys brutally killed through sophication, ammonia gill burns, or many problems so that you could buy that one online or at the petstore?

You have the nerve to try to play the moral card with ME while Im actually HELPING the reefs while you sit back and blindly enjoy your wild caught animals because you are ignorant of the animals that were ripped from there homes and painfully murdered for yours to make it to the pet store. Or do there deaths not matter because you personally havent seen hundreds of bags of animals being discarded because they didnt survive the harvesting process. Tens of thousands (likely hundreds of thousands) of wild caught fish are simply discarded at the whole sale shipping locations just because they look frail with stress or have some shock induced parcite etc.

You guys seriously need to open your eyes and see who the immoral killer here is. After learning about the process wild caught fish go through, I will personally never buy another wild caught fish (sadly, most of my fish are) of any type unless its for the sole purpose of aquacultureing the fish. This is why dedicated breeders like Elmo are so important to this hobby. BTW Elmo, I would think you if anybody would understand and agree with this.

I just cant understand how the hell you guys can get off with your morality and torture BS spewing while you all smile and buy the wild fish in the pet stores. Whos hands are covered in blood, but ignorance so cleanly wipes it away they feel they can judge others who are HELPING the problem...

End RANT, I had been telling myself I wouldnt bring up the wild caught alternative, but you guys drove me to it.

 

[steve-s]

I just cant understand how the hell you guys can get off with your morality and torture BS spewing while you all smile and buy the wild fish in the pet stores. Whos hands are covered in blood, but ignorance so cleanly wipes it away they feel they can judge others who are HELPING the problem...

Luke,

I think you have missed the larger picture in regards to some of our objections. It is not the fact that you are fragging the anemones at all, it's the process and the experimentation. In fact, most any reasonable hobbyist would encourage you to continue your cloning efforst but instead that it moves toward improving survival rates and technique, nothing more.

Your rants really serve no purpose as they do not address the objectionable issue. I am sure most would encourage you to keep up with the propogation but I think you should really examine the merits of what has transpired here and evaluate what could possibley be accomplished by pushing the envelope on known issues.

Cheers
Steve

 

[Krish]

Luke,

I think you have missed the larger picture in regards to some of our objections. It is not the fact that you are fragging the anemones at all, it's the process and the experimentation. In fact, most any reasonable hobbyist would encourage you to continue your cloning efforst but instead that it moves toward improving survival rates and technique, nothing more.

Your rants really serve no purpose as they do not address the objectionable issue. I am sure most would encourage you to keep up with the propogation but I think you should really examine the merits of what has transpired here and evaluate what could possibley be accomplished by pushing the envelope on known issues.

Cheers
Steve

Ditto...No one is busting you for fragging. Just the "torture" part or how much they can endure is the issue. I think where Mike said fragging had a 99.9 success rate meant we don't need to "push the envelope". Just the simple act of fragging and "good " or "proper" care was necessary to prevent a lot of wild caught specimens from being removed from the ocean. They don't need to be pushed to their limits for any benefit because it really doesn't prove much. Nevertheless, it was an informative thread because I have never seen it done before (fragging). The "pushing the envelope" part seemed a bit cruel though...

 

[Krish]

You have the nerve to try to play the moral card with ME while Im actually HELPING the reefs while you sit back and blindly enjoy your wild caught animals because you are ignorant of the animals that were ripped from there homes and painfully murdered for yours to make it to the pet store

BTW being "moral" about things and "helping the reefs" as you are trying to do, is not done by asking someone to send you bags of snails and hermits they can get in their backyard to sell to kids. Again...It's not about the fragging. It's about being cruel or pushing the envelope when it isn't necessary...

 

[mojoreef]

LOL its kind of funny how this things seems to have gotten legs here. Please allow me to summerize here because the thread seems to be off on a tangent.

In the fragging demo the use of low grade scissors were used, this was corrected by suggestions to use a sharper device, no biggie and made the thread better.

The anenome was cut up in a tank with other critters, not a good plan as you can pollute and harm the other critters, this was also corrected by suggestions to not do so and to do it in a seperate tank, good advice and also not a biggie

The anenome was cut while not using gloves, not a good idea as it can cause a bad reaction to the fragger, not a good idea as the thread applies this is a fragging lesson. I am sure no one would want someone to have a bad reaction while doing this process, so just a miss and was corrected by suggestion.

Cutting an anenome into 4 is much more of a risk to the animal then just cutting it into two. Not a big thing but should have been mentioned, it wasnt but someone said it so it was added to the content of the thread.

Everything mentioned above is fine I believe with everyone on this thread, yes it probibly should have been research a little more prior to being posted but the author was excited to contribute..works for me, when I first read it I knew the problems would be addressed.

Where most folks lost patcience with this thread was in the experimenting that was being done and being talked about. This experiment was pretty much looking for the stress limits on the anenomes that had just been cut into four. When the overall concept of this hobby is to keep things alive and to propagate in order to slow down wild collection it makes absolutely no sence to try and find the distruction point of an animal by stress it with temp and salinity.

This concept was critisized and so it should be and it shouldnt be conscrewed as an attack nor should it be a reason to attack. So lets not take any of those paths. Experimenting is fine as long as it doesnt put the critters in harms way, trying new foods, dsb's, bb, additives lighting regimines and so on are all great things to experiment in order to find a better way to take better care of the critters you give a home and I dont think anyone is against that, but the key words are "a better way to take better care of the critters "

So anyway lets continue the thread and not worry about all the outside issues that are bouncing around now.


Mike

 

[snobanker]

I'd say Mike pretty well summed up the whole thread right there.

 

[spongebob lover]

i agree with Stan and by the way partner i like your avatar that's a cute one

 

[snobanker]

Thanks Gabby, I like to refer to that one as "Anenomes revenge"...lol:badgrin:

 

[jetaero]

I double that.

I'd say Mike pretty well summed up the whole thread right there.

-Josh-