Rock Flower Anemone Information and Appreciation Thread

[paneubert]

Did anyone try for any of the AquaSD rock nems in their auction tonight?  I had my eye on these two.

 

 

[Dos Ocho]

A new white-striped RFA from KP Aquatics in my Biocube. 

[MockandRoll]

On 8/28/2018 at 10:05 AM, MockandRoll said:

Wanted to update that to my surprise I am finding babies stuck all over my rock. I am estimated there are between 10-20 that have survive so far. 

So it looks like I was wrong about my flow getting most of the RFA babies. My last count was 40+ babies still alive in the tank. I don't  know what I am going to do once they start to get big.

[paneubert]

28 minutes ago, MockandRoll said:

So it looks like I was wrong about my flow getting most of the RFA babies. My last count was 40+ babies still alive in the tank. I don't  know what I am going to do once they start to get big.

Send them to me...... 😉

[MockandRoll]

21 hours ago, paneubert said:

Send them to me...... 😉

My plan is to wait until they are the size of a quarter then remove. That should be interesting

[Kellie in CA]

I had to move my tank this weekend to my new apartment.  Luckily all went pretty smoothly.  My RFA was firmly attached to the bottom glass and no amount of gentle prodding would get him to detach.  I was scared of damaging him, so I eventually just let him be and left him in the sand with about an inch total of water in the bottom of the tank.  I was a bit scared, but within a couple hours of filling the tank back up, he was open and moving around a bit.  I'm pretty impressed with how hardy these guys are! It's now been a couple of days and he looks great!  I'm hoping to pick up a few more at Reef-A-Palooza next month.

[My tiny reef]

On September 2, 2018 at 11:42 PM, MockandRoll said:

So it looks like I was wrong about my flow getting most of the RFA babies. My last count was 40+ babies still alive in the tank. I don't  know what I am going to do once they start to get big.

How big are they now? Are you trying to spot feed them?  I've had a large spawning the past two years and only had one from each survive and grow.  One year I moved tanks and think it wasn't stable enough and the second I had crazy bubble algae breakout so that may have been the problem.  This year I had a good spawning and think I'll end up with more babies.  I'll post some pictures.  Trying to spot feed more frequently by also keep water clean and stable.  

[My tiny reef]

Here are some of my babies, I may have had two different spawnings because 6-7 are significantly larger than the others, but I also noticed that one of the mama's brooded some babies longer than others. They are between 3-5 months old I think. Many look like they will have good color and have made it longer and gotten bigger and more color than any of my past spawning, so I'm really hoping for a better success rate with these.

 

also the orange with green skirt is my successfully baby from last year and the red with purple mouth is from two years ago...just reference for growth rate.

[KW NANOREEF]

52 minutes ago, My tiny reef said:

Here are some of my babies, I may have had two different spawnings because 6-7 are significantly larger than the others, but I also noticed that one of the mama's brooded some babies longer than others. They are between 3-5 months old I think. Many look like they will have good color and have made it longer and gotten bigger and more color than any of my past spawning, so I'm really hoping for a better success rate with these.

 

also the orange with green skirt is my successfully baby from last year and the red with purple mouth is from two years ago...just reference for growth rate.

If you are looking to get rid of them, feel free to send them on over. I’m sure @Nano Nano Boo Boo And I would love a few!

[SeaFurn]

2 hours ago, My tiny reef said:

Here are some of my babies, I may have had two different spawnings because 6-7 are significantly larger than the others, but I also noticed that one of the mama's brooded some babies longer than others. They are between 3-5 months old I think. Many look like they will have good color and have made it longer and gotten bigger and more color than any of my past spawning, so I'm really hoping for a better success rate with these.

 

also the orange with green skirt is my successfully baby from last year and the red with purple mouth is from two years ago...just reference for growth rate.

Very cool! I recently found 14 new babies. I wasn’t expecting any for another couple of weeks so I’m keeping my eye open for more. 

 

Last year I probably had around 80 babies, not all at once, and was able to keep 30 of them alive. That took a lot daily effort keeping track of them and feeding them. This was in a 14 gallon. I’ve now got a 45g shallow set-up for the sole purpose of breeding them. 

[dpoltsdsu]

15 hours ago, SeaFurn said:

Very cool! I recently found 14 new babies. I wasn’t expecting any for another couple of weeks so I’m keeping my eye open for more. 

 

Last year I probably had around 80 babies, not all at once, and was able to keep 30 of them alive. That took a lot daily effort keeping track of them and feeding them. This was in a 14 gallon. I’ve now got a 45g shallow set-up for the sole purpose of breeding them. 

That's awesome. What did you feed the baby ones?

 

Did you do anything to get them to spawn?

On 7/10/2018 at 12:30 PM, BulkRate said:

In my next tank, I'm going to make a concerted effort to avoid making any cave deep enough to allow an RFA to starve itself.

 

Oh, it seemed like a good idea at the time when I was setting up my first tank & scape... y'know to give the fish & other critters someplace to hide & reduce stress from the tank being right by the entryway into the living room.  But that one ~5" hole has caused ME plenty of stress in how much stuff simply hides there perpetually. 🙄

 

[ngvu1]

18 hours ago, My tiny reef said:

Here are some of my babies, I may have had two different spawnings because 6-7 are significantly larger than the others, but I also noticed that one of the mama's brooded some babies longer than others. They are between 3-5 months old I think. Many look like they will have good color and have made it longer and gotten bigger and more color than any of my past spawning, so I'm really hoping for a better success rate with these.

 

also the orange with green skirt is my successfully baby from last year and the red with purple mouth is from two years ago...just reference for growth rate.

How big is the 2 years old baby?  They seems to grow so slow if left alone unfed

[alexversa]

Figured I’d post some newer shots of my tank

[paneubert]

My two came in from last week's AquaSD Ebay auction.  Smaller than I thought, but that is common with Ebay auctions in my experience.  Haha.  Phone takes horribly blue shots, so these need to be cleaned up a lot.  

 

1 and 5/8 inch frag disk for this one.

This is the auction photo for the same nem. Haha!

 

Looks like I don't have a photo of the other one I got,  But it is orange center with a white/lighter skirt.  It is a lot more pissed off than the first one was, so I will take a photo if/when it opens up.  Here it is in the auction.....

[seabass]

FTFY:

[paneubert]

Can you add some super bright red and yellow, then make it 4 inches across?  Haha.  I kid.  I am well aware of how nothing will ever look like the listing. 🙂

[My tiny reef]

3 hours ago, ngvu1 said:

How big is the 2 years old baby?  They seems to grow so slow if left alone unfed

It's about 1.5-2 inches.  Here's a picture of it by some of my 3" adults (the red one in the middle is the mom). The two year old is the red one on the left, the smaller red on the right is from this years spawning, much bigger at 3 months than any of my past.  I have fed it a lot more though.

 

[ngvu1]

My biggest baby is almost a Quarter in size. I feed that mofo almost daily the lps pellets.

 

And it has been 3 months easily.  The one I don't feed are barely growing.  I have some nice babies but so far nothing is as nice as 1 of the parents

 

 

 

[SeaFurn]

5 hours ago, dpoltsdsu said:

That's awesome. What did you feed the baby ones?

 

Did you do anything to get them to spawn?

 

I feed them a variety of things depending on their size - powdered coral food, decapsulated brine shrimp eggs, mysis shrimp particles. I’ve found that shaving frozen mysis shrimp cubes and mixing it rigorously with tank water makes tiny tiny particles and has worked great. The baby nems can grab the tiny particles and then when the pumps come on it blows what they don’t take around the tank for the others. It does’t take much to feed the babies (2ml in my case) so I’m not loading the tank with too many nutrients. 

 

No, I don’t do anything to get them to spawn. They will do it several times per year at various intervals. I’ve been trying to figure out when it’s going to happen and what triggers it. I take a lot of notes. Haha! 

 

Yeah I’ve spoken to Bulkrate. He’s given me a lot of tips to help get the “Flower Farm” set-up for baby rearing! 

[paneubert]

Got a slightly better shot of my orange and white nem.  Seems to be spitting out its guts after I target fed it some powdered coral food mixed with some frozen mysis/brine.  

[SeaFurn]

1 hour ago, paneubert said:

Got a slightly better shot of my orange and white nem.  Seems to be spitting out its guts after I target fed it some powdered coral food mixed with some frozen mysis/brine.  

That’s pretty typical after a big feeding. It will go back to normal.

 

I like ones with all white tentacles like that! 

 

[seabass]

3 hours ago, paneubert said:

Got a slightly better shot of my orange and white nem.

Very nice!

[paneubert]

3 minutes ago, seabass said:

Very nice!

Haha.  Thanks for the color correction.  During the week I will be at work with access to the entire Adobe suite, so I can photoshop them much easier.  Haha.

[My tiny reef]

I never saw the males spawn but at least one of my mamas has babies again! They are very tiny so it must have just happened recently.  I haven't had a late year/fall spawning before.  It's always been around spring/early summer, so I'm so excited for a 2nd batch this year.  This mom I can always see the little babies in.  Hope the other females have some too.

[My tiny reef]

Never underestimate the "common" ones, this zebra one looks like it's got a flash light in its mouth.