Guide to fraging RTBA

[liveforphysics]

RTBA (rose tip bubble anemone) are beautiful creatures. They are rapidly harvested from natural reefs because of how beautiful they are in our aquariums. I belive that this is un-needed damage to natural reefs, because any healthy tank can produce them easily. The purpose of this post is to show how easy it is to frag RTBAs.

So, to begin, you must start with a healthy RTBA. This perticular RTBA is quite a bit larger than my clams and corals appreciate, so I will be turning him into 4 RTBAs. If he were smaller, I would just do two.

So, here is the monster, and his evil clown demon.

Pull the rock its foot is mounted to up near the surface so you can begin to scrape the foot up. It sometimes takes brutal thumb force to get a start on the foot.

Here I have a start on getting the foot up.

I stop when about 3/4th of the foot is up. If I were to just make 2 anemones, I would only pull up half the foot.

Now its time to get in there with the sisscors and line up where you want your cut lines to be. This can be really tricky to see, so do what you gotta do to unfold it and get those sisscors were you want them.

Start your cut, it can be really tough to cut through, much tougher than you would expect, so be ready for some serious cutting force. My clown was FREAKING out.

This looks terrible, but dont worry, you wont feel a thing Edges like that just heal right up, and a new mouth forms on each chunk. Its likely releaseing things into your tank that other reef animals dont appreciate, but I've never seen any problem associated with it.

Here they are roughly back in the same spot in the tank. That clown was in super ultra attack mode, so due to multiple bleeding bite wounds on my hands I decided to wait a bit for him to cool down before putting the other rocks back

I will take some update pics for you guys and try to post some data of exactly how long it takes them to heal completely and be ready to frag again. As soon as they have functioning mouths again, I will give them shrimp every other day for a week and then frag them each again. Then I will repeat the process one or two more times, but in a dedicated tank, because at that point it will be up around 30+ RTBAs.

Anyways, the goal here is that less of them will need to be taken from the wild if more people frag them. I am also guessing that RTBAs with years of tank life aclimate much better to differnt aquariums than those that are wild harvested, but I have no proof of this.

 

[Elmo18]

PM sent.

- Ilham

 

[jetaero]

Interesting... Seems it would harm them more than naturally splitting... But, I'm interested in seeing the outcome!

-Josh-

 

[spongebob lover]

all i have to say is aahhh !!!!
dood you're a brave young man for handling the clownfish bites good, but i didn't wanna see the picture with the scissors... that was creepy, at least for me.
I think it's good info if anyone wants to frag their anemones because i didn't know you could do it in that way.

 

[Krish]

Never seen anything like that done before!(LOL) Cool man...Keep us up to date with the photos

 

[spongebob lover]

you know i wonder if this is the method Anthony Calfo was refering one time.

 

[mungus]

you know i wonder if this is the method Anthony Calfo was refering one time.

I remember him refering to it also. It would be nice to know if this is the same method.

Brian

 

[Curtswearing]

I've fragged an anemone before but I've never done it in the tank. I've never split a RBTA but I've done a condy. Here's a little trick I read about and have used. Grab an ice cube and rub it on the anemone's 'foot'. They will eventually release.

 

[-=dieseldave=-]

Let me some this up, you’re a butcher!
The method may work but it is completely wrong.

 

[northstaraquatics]

All of my splits have been naturally and have over 30 anemones so far. I'm just not ready for the slice and dice yet. I think a better set of poultry shears is the ticket and a smooth cut through the center of the mouth.

Jon

PS: The only trick I can't figure out is how get them to stop splitting. And Luke, it was good meeting you at the last meeting.

 

[ethanriley]

Luke can this be done with any anemone in your opinion? Very beautiful I hope it all works out for you.

 

[liveforphysics]

Thanks, they are all looking fine, or at least as fine as anemones in the shape of jigsaw puzzle pieces can look. Ironically, the bigest chunk that I left hooked to the rock traveled right over the the powerhead suction tube during the night... But I shut off, and he seems to be pulling out back out of the tube OK.

Ethan- as far as which species tolerate it, I dont know. Im not an expert, but I'm thinking about sliceing in half my 14" diameter pearl white with blue tips seabae as an experiment to see how seabaes like it.

I think Anthony Calfo said that most any type of healthy anemone in a healthy enviroment can be propagated this way. He also said not to worry about getting mouth in each section, just foot. The mouths will heal up and re-grow from anything that lives with a foot.

Also, for the more squeemish folks, you can simply take a razor blade and make a real deep slash in the stalk and foot area to trigger a split. That was my old method, and it works fine, but it takes a couple days for them to split after that, and you generally only get 1 split. Still I think its a great option, and I will likely give that method a whirl with my seabae.

 

[Anthony Calfo]

kudos for the effort and documentation.

Anemones more than perhaps any coral are in dire need of domestic aquaculture if not the cessation of wild collections. Their rates of recovery inthe wild are dismal from (over)harvesting (read: not recovering even after ten years in many locales)

Simple bilateral division like this has been done successfully for years on all trade species I am aware of except for the ritteri (a truly inappropriate species for captivity in so many ways).

My only criticisms here are that the procedure was done in the tank (noxious exudations to other tankmates) and without gloved hands (poor technique and unsafe to show others... risks of Vibrio, piscine Tuberculosus, etc)

To make a truly responsible effort here... let us encourage folks to do this with a sharper single edged blade (less collateral damage with a scalpel or X-acto knife) and in species specific prop tanks only. My opinions about the unnatural keeping of anemones in tanks with coral (let alone propagating them) is well documented on most every message board I've ever participated on if anyone is interested to do a keyword search and followup.

But again... kudos for the effort overall

 

[liveforphysics]

Thank you Anthony.

Hopefully this will keep a few more anemones from being ripped of the reef.

Do you have a glove type you recomend that enables you do pull up the anemone's foot while wearing them? I have latex and nitril gloves surgical gloves here, but I dont feel I have any control with holding the anemone while wearing them. I agree though, I should be wearing something.

Thank you for the advise about what blades to use. All my scalpels were rust on a plastic stick when i looked for one yesterday, or I would have used one.

Just curious, do you recomend quadforcation (or more) on large animals? I noticed you only wrote bilateral division.

 

[spongebob lover]

After the fragging, would the clownfish do any harm to the anemone?

 

[tennismurph]

Fantastic but scarry! Be interested in follow-up pics

 

[mfinn]

I read something about people taking a large rtba and placing it on a flat surface and using a new razor blade, slicing it in four pieces and then puting the four separate pieces in a prop tank to heal up.
On the same board was the response, that was the reson behind the decline in price and the large amount of them around now.

I don't have any way to back that up or any way to tell if it was just a internet rumor.

 

[spongebob lover]

you know i can see how the prices are declining, almost everyone now days have rbt and green ones too.

 

[Aquatic Guru]

That's freaky...no gloves. You got B_lls! Poor anemone.

 

[MarineTeng]

i thought i'd mention something aside from the fact that your anemone is beautiful, i noticed that there are no bubbles until after you fragged it, i don't have an anemone so i don't know if that's normal for contracting bta's just a thought though