Rock Flower Anemone Information and Appreciation Thread

[Droy008]

Kimberly if it makes you feel any better I have a number of RFA's now, and I have yet to see any babies...

[FlowerMama]

Kimberly if it makes you feel any better I have a number of RFA's now, and I have yet to see any babies...

 

Might just be luck of the draw unfortunately, usually once 2.5" & up they spawn. Could just be those palm sized ones are females.

Liking the colours on this baby!

 

 

It's a beauty!!!! Was it like 6-8 wks late after the males spawned? I had 5 males that spawned 5.5 wks ago so hoping some time soon here I'll have some spawning mothers.

[getmealemon]

No think this one is a few months old, have another batch much smaller. I've cut feeding right back to try and deal with flatworm issue and seems to be slowing there growth.

[BulkRate]

WTF, why does everyone get babies but me?!? I've had rock flowers for more than a year and a half now. No way I have 18 all the same gender!

 

It took over 2 years for me to start seeing baby anemones... bought most of mine at the 1" to 1.5" mark, didn't see males start spawning until about 2" and the confirmed female didn't start producing babies until she was about 2.5" to 3" across.

[Droy008]

So one of my more ordinary RFA;s has really turned into a special piece in my tank!

This nem started out as any ordinary orange with green frills guy.

Then I noticed that it's starting to get purple tips on its fringes!

It's much fancier than I realized, I'm so excited!

[FlowerMama]

What's cool is they do change What you see when you first get is not the whole picture. I've had straight tentacles become barbed at 2", had other colors like you mentioned, pop out that weren't there before.

[getmealemon]

So i lost another rock flower anemone the other day, again just melted. I can now definitely rule out flatworm, bristleworm and other corals/fish etc being the culprit as i moved all of my anemones into a new tank just over a month ago. Again all others look fine.

 

I'm thinking of changing from black gravel to sand, it's the only major difference i can see between my setup and most others.

[BulkRate]

Rather than clutter up FlowerMama's Bloomin' Tank o' Generousity thread... here the requested update of my first "real' spawning back in the summer. here we are, six-odd months later.

 

Only time I seem to have luck is when I "clump" the baby nems together. Otherwise they just wander around and eventually disappear.

 

 

 

One thing I've learned is that food matters! Once they get to about this size they really, really want bigger food. When they were at the quarter-lentil stage they needed decapped brine shrimp eggs or v2o zooplankton or they withered away. Nowadays if they don't get a couple canalus/cyclopeze sized morsels every 2-3 days their growth stalls out and they stop developing color.

 

I have another newer patch of 4 babies that look like they're in it for the long haul, but I can't seem to get a decent shot of them... they're masquerading as zoas ATM.

 

I suspect this is just about the limit of what I can do for them in a smaller mixed reef tank with a non-rfa friendly rockscape. They blunder into dark crevices/caves or get buried/stung by other corals (I know my midnight yuma's taken out at least 3-4 that I thought were well past the insta-melt point). Maybe folk with dedicated nursery tanks (looking at you getmealemon) will have better yields.

[FlowerMama]

Oh I love your baby pics!!!!!!!! That second pic!!!!! They look huge compared to mine and their colors are outstanding. I know what you mean about the food. Mine are very grabby right now. I know the pieces sometimes are obviously bigger than them but I'm hoping that in that time they get a little something. I've seen it 3 hrs later they're still holding on...

 

I don't know what I'll do later to take them off the rock but the majority except about 8 are on the substrate. Smaller ones I wanted to move on the substrate I sucked up with the turkey baster then let it fall out where I wanted. Before that I'd try to scoop under w/ the back of a fingernail but sometimes I'd lose it. I hope I can get them all to 1/4" inch size and move them to the nursery.

 

Did most of yours only have white tentacles and they changed later or one color and then later show 2 or 3?

[BulkRate]

Feeding baby nems is tricky... I eventually found I had to give mine daily feedings of tiny particulate food (but very, very small amounts to avoid them having rotting-food-in-the-gut) or attrition went through the roof. Larger foods got introduced when they started being grabby, about 1/4 the size of their oral disc. - guarantees they can get it in their mouths if they really are eating it, but not so big that they waste all their energy hanging onto it.

 

Those were all from the birthing that happened in the summer (out of about 30 confirmed at the time). It was weird... almost all of those were larger-than-average on birth, but my god, they demonstrated how dumb anemones could be.. into caves that had no end, into ricordeas, eaten by asterinas - oh, the carnage.

 

I also have about 8-10 tiny ones (also all orange or green with white tentacles) that showed up in the last 2 weeks. I'm thinking of swapping out one of my males for an unknown gendered ultra high-end one to get a potentially wider range of colors in future.

 

As for getting the ones out of the rocks - easiest way I know of to get a rock flower to volunatily disengage once it's really gotten its foot deep is to GENTLY prod its foot with frozen straws filled w/ RODI water. They'll get annoyed and start wandering after about 15 minutes of irritation.

[FlowerMama]

Wow, you're able to really cut it tiny. I have some cyclopeeze I give, I have one of those bulb pistons & suck up the juice from the shotglass and shoot it their way, sometimes it goes past them. Later on I'll turn on the flow and then it'll whiz around to the big ones.

 

I'll have to remember that, frozen straws. How did you come up with that?? That's brilliant.

 

It's hard to guess how it'll go when I have 26 nems in there, only know of 6 males so far. I have a nice deep red nem, it hasn't yet put its foot down, wish it would. It's like a nickel, so it'll be a long time before any red gets in any nems.

 

I wonder if the grey part of teenys is giving me that periwinkle? It's hard to know if 2 rainbows together make an ugly combo or if it's better when you have a rainbow and a solid. I was trying to get some solids here lately but I know I'm also lacking in some design too.

[BulkRate]

I have a ghetto version of Julian's Thing for target feeding my (ersatz) mandarin that also turned out to be a handy baby rock flower feeder, too... more precise and blows less food away from the intended recipient. MacGyvered together by using 1' of rigid airline tubing, about 1' of flexible, and a 5 or 10ml oral syringe (free for the asking at any CVS/RiteAID/Walgreens/etc).

 

Pipettes proved too prone to blasting food away from what I was feeding. that or my hammy mitts are too prone to squeezing too hard. as for cutting/mincing foods - no trick to it. Decapsulated brine shrimp cysts are tiny, as is whatever they mulch into V2O Zooplanton. then it's up to frozen cylopeeze/canalus and I only have to bust out the mad knife skillz when its time to move them on to Larry's Nano Frenzy.

 

The freeze-pop straw trick came about when I was watching someone at a frag swap try to get a RBTA to let go from a rock and thought - that'd never work in my case since rock flower anemones tend to choose even deeper crevices where you can't get a normal cube of ice into. Aaaannnd... presto. Easy way to convince practically any reef critter to start trucking for greener pastures.

 

You also have to remember to cut the flow pumps before trying... otherwise that thin a piece of ice will melt in seconds (even doing so you'll likely need 3-4 made up to get a stubborn RFA to budge).

 

Another trick is to just repeatedly prod the part of the foot you can reach with something that won't tear the flesh - a nitrile gloved pinky or q-tip's worked well in many cases and is a little less a pain in the keester to prep. after about 10-15 minutes it'll loosen its hold enough that you'll be able to practically blow an anemone off a rock with a baster.

[FlowerMama]

Yeah, love Larry's. Everything in the tank loves Larry's. I need to buy some but I have to find out who sells here. The one of 2 shops here is being sold and that was the only one that sold LRS. I have one from Ray's, more geared toward algae lovers but I don't like it as much. I'm gonna start feeding the fish with it and let some little pieces float around the tank to feed other things. Keep it up, I think your flowers are awesome!!!!

[solitude127]

How can you tell if a Flower nem is male or female?

[FlowerMama]

How can you tell if a Flower nem is male or female?

 

You can't, until they spawn. Males emit the smoky spawn, females release a grown anemone. So until they're 2-2 .5" you will not know. That's part of the fun for me. Waiting to see after 8-9 mos of growth what you have is exciting.

[solitude127]

 

You can't, until they spawn. Males emit the smoky spawn, females release a grown anemone. So until they're 2-2 .5" you will not know. That's part of the fun for me. Waiting to see after 8-9 mos of growth what you have is exciting.

Thank you. Here are a few of the ones I picked up recently.

 

[FlowerMama]

Enjoy! They're easy to take care of and they don't hurt other curls like torches and frogs can. They love being cozy with one another and prefer groups.

[Shoob1e]

Have any of you guys had luck with yasha gobys and rfas, im looking to start a rfa tank with a 25 lagoon and havent really got an answer if they will eat them or not.

[FlowerMama]

Rfas won't eat fish unless a fish is sickly and it happens to touch its tentacles. All fish just seem to know to swim over them.

[Shoob1e]

Rfas won't eat fish unless a fish is sickly and it happens to touch its tentacles. All fish just seem to know to swim over them.

 

Ty going to be a fun tank

[FlowerMama]

I'm just gonna place this sweet thing here. I hope he/she turns out to be a wonderful parent. It's so bright in the middle, it's sunshine yellow with almost royal blue striping. I've never seen one like this and it's very special to me.

 

[BulkRate]

Last night another spawning by the males in the tank. I've been finding new babies to the tune of one every couple of days, but they're all in the very tiny range.

 

And these followed me home the other day!

 

 

(Forgive the coraline buildup... new nano flipper just arrived - but whilst the spirit is willing, treefer is lazy)

[FlowerMama]

Nice additions! I have my males spawning like crazy but don't know why I haven't seen females. Still waiting on the female spawning generated by 12/2. Then I think I had another a couple weeks after that. Just waiting. I'd love to have this nursery tank start its cycling Saturday and coral the babies w/ the turkey baster if they come out w/ in the next couple weeks, gotta try to keep them in the sand and not get them on the rocks. I love finding babies here & there daily!

[ninjamyst]

Does anyone know of any place where their RFAs are aquacultured instead of collected??

[FlowerMama]

Maybe the place in Michigan? Tropicorium. They had that Sept/Oct 2012 breeding article in Coral Mag.