Rock Flower Anemone Information and Appreciation Thread

[ReefFish]

4 minutes ago, seabass said:

That's the thing about free markets, if it were easy to make money doing something, (barring regulations preventing it) others would step in and try to undercut you.

And if the store isn't making money on them they would just go out of business then it would be really hard to get them 😕

[ngvu1]

24 minutes ago, ReefFish said:

But the stores have to factor in their prices that they will have loss and it takes some time to sell them 

 

That's why you see the ultra RFA's that they pick out of their bulk 100+ orders going for $35 - $100 to try and make up for their losses and they sell the red RFA's for $20 and greens for $10 and up

 

So it may seem like the stores are ripping you off when they are only paying $3 - $5 but it's a lot of work holding hundreds of them to get that price and the loss and time to sell them

 

It's actually not that bad of a price when you can get a nice ultra RFA order of 10 for $230 with free shipping or in store pick the exact one you want for around $30

I totally understand that. The stores need to pay for a lot of things so overhead will be adding to the price we pay.  I am just saying or more like being curious of the whole thing :-)

[Kellie in CA]

I swear, my 3 "special collection" rock flowers are like Sirens.  They have formed a line and I think they call out to the other RFA's in the tank.  One by one the Ultras move from their spots and charge directly towards them.  Then they get stung and end up sulking away. Over & over again. 

[NoOneLikesADryTang]

5 minutes ago, Kellie in CA said:

I swear, my 3 "special collection" rock flowers are like Sirens.  They have formed a line and I think they call out to the other RFA's in the tank.  One by one the Ultras move from their spots and charge directly towards them.  Then they get stung and end up sulking away. Over & over again. 

I've actually moved my 3 "special collection" RFA's away from the others. I think I'm going to try and find them new homes, because I don't want them to go on a rampage... Even thought I love how different they look. 

[Kellie in CA]

17 hours ago, NoOneLikesADryTang said:

I've actually moved my 3 "special collection" RFA's away from the others. I think I'm going to try and find them new homes, because I don't want them to go on a rampage... Even thought I love how different they look. 

Yeah, I'm not sure what to do.  It's a bummer because they have started to develop some really cool colors and patterns. 

[Newstead]

Help us out, folks. Our plain Jane RFA moved back to the front of a rock yesterday and looked fine (first pic). I dosed my usual mag & alk last night, then an hour later 2 ml of H202 (24 gal water volume) because 1) There was a slight red dusting on some glass and sand, and 2) I am an idiot. This morning the anemone has bleached out. It did eat some LRS this morning. I know there is a largish white worm, I believe a bristleworm, in that rock. 

Is the RFA on its way out? Could it have been the H202 or the worm?

 

[SeaFurn]

2 hours ago, Newstead said:

Help us out, folks. Our plain Jane RFA moved back to the front of a rock yesterday and looked fine (first pic). I dosed my usual mag & alk last night, then an hour later 2 ml of H202 (24 gal water volume) because 1) There was a slight red dusting on some glass and sand, and 2) I am an idiot. This morning the anemone has bleached out. It did eat some LRS this morning. I know there is a largish white worm, I believe a bristleworm, in that rock. 

Is the RFA on its way out? Could it have been the H202 or the worm?

 

It definitely wasn’t the worm. Mine eat bristleworms if they get too close! Weird you say it was a white worm because bristle worms are brown / red. 

 

Unfortunately I don’t know what to tell you to do about the bleached one. Hopefully it will start regaining its color. 

[Newstead]

Thanks, SeaFurn... I probably have some type of mutant anemone killing worm.  I caught it slithering from one hole in the rock to another last week when the RFA was still hiding in the back. My phone would not focus on it but it was whitish and spiky. Sorry for the poor focus - here is a still shot, the video was too large to load. That larger hole above the worm is where the RFA moved to.

 

 

[Newstead]

SeaFurn, I loaded the pathetic video of it on Instagram and tagged you. See what you think. If it is a mutant hobbit worm that will eat our faces as we sleep, I am through.

 

[Baldguy]

On 3/13/2019 at 4:20 PM, NoOneLikesADryTang said:

I've actually moved my 3 "special collection" RFA's away from the others. I think I'm going to try and find them new homes, because I don't want them to go on a rampage... Even thought I love how different they look. 

I see Aquasd has a few more "special" ones up on their site.  I'm so tempted!  They are for sure a different critter than our Carribean rfa's.

[NoOneLikesADryTang]

2 hours ago, Baldguy said:

I see Aquasd has a few more "special" ones up on their site.  I'm so tempted!  They are for sure a different critter than our Carribean rfa's.

They are definitely sturdier than your normal rock flower. I had one take a ride through and MP40, with nary a scratch. Just had to peel it off in the morning. We’ve moved these guys in to our growout tank for now, that just gets blasted with flow. If the three that I have decided to gang up on the powerhead, I probably would need a new pump. 

 

These guys are tough... I’m still not sure what I’m going to do with the three that I have.  Their bodies just feel different/sturdier than the Caribbean and they definitely have a stronger hold with their foot than their Caribbean counterparts. 

[tofer]

Today found this little guy under the one female . I did also notice  most of the babies are now on the rock or attached to the back wall at sand level  so that is a plus  

[NoOneLikesADryTang]

Have you guys ever seen a rock flower grow an arm? This guy was stretching up, and it looks like an arm is growing out of him.

[SeaFurn]

2 hours ago, NoOneLikesADryTang said:

Have you guys ever seen a rock flower grow an arm? This guy was stretching up, and it looks like an arm is growing out of him.

Weird! Looks like a separate nem altogether - conjoined twins! 

Although the little one hasn’t kept up on growth.

[NoOneLikesADryTang]

47 minutes ago, SeaFurn said:

Weird! Looks like a separate nem altogether - conjoined twins! 

Although the little one hasn’t kept up on growth.

That’s exactly what it looks like. I haven’t been able to tell yet, if it had a mouth. Now that I’ve noticed it, I’ll keep monitoring it to see if I can learn more about it. 

[SeaFurn]

 

[Baldguy]

4 hours ago, NoOneLikesADryTang said:

Have you guys ever seen a rock flower grow an arm? This guy was stretching up, and it looks like an arm is growing out of him.

Others have posted on other forums the same thing.  Supposedly it is asexual reproduction.  The theory is that eventually the babies would detach.

[NoOneLikesADryTang]

2 hours ago, Baldguy said:

Others have posted on other forums the same thing.  Supposedly it is asexual reproduction.  The theory is that eventually the babies would detach.

Interesting. I’ll have to keep an eye on this one to and see if it ever detaches. 

[NoOneLikesADryTang]

3 hours ago, SeaFurn said:

 

This is so incredible! How old are these babies? 

[SeaFurn]

7 hours ago, Baldguy said:

Others have posted on other forums the same thing.  Supposedly it is asexual reproduction.  The theory is that eventually the babies would detach.

I’m not completely sold on asexual reproduction in Epicystis crucifer. Maybe there’s some other species other that does that? However, it is interesting that all the babies look exactly the same in this picture. Mine rarely look like the mom. 

Some do stick to the underside of the mom for a period of time (for safety most likely) but eventually all have wandered out to find their own spot. 

[SeaFurn]

5 hours ago, NoOneLikesADryTang said:

This is so incredible! How old are these babies? 

This batch is from November and December. I moved the ones you see, which were easy to pluck off the sand, to the nem box in early January. There ar probably just as many still attached to the rocks that I couldn’t move but they are faring well. 

[ReefFish]

5 hours ago, SeaFurn said:

This batch is from November and December. I moved the ones you see, which were easy to pluck off the sand, to the nem box in early January. There ar probably just as many still attached to the rocks that I couldn’t move but they are faring well. 

What has been your baby RFA survival rate and are you feeding them anything special to help them grow I used Coralific Delite by Hikari and they seemed to grow faster

[Baldguy]

12 hours ago, SeaFurn said:

I’m not completely sold on asexual reproduction in Epicystis crucifer. Maybe there’s some other species other that does that? However, it is interesting that all the babies look exactly the same in this picture. Mine rarely look like the mom. 

Some do stick to the underside of the mom for a period of time (for safety most likely) but eventually all have wandered out to find their own spot. 

I'm not completely sold either but I've seen several pics of this "budding"  I know bta's can reproduce sexually by spawning or asexually by splitting so it does seem feasible that rfa's could do both also.  Especially as the budding always produces identical copies of the mother, as you say.

[SeaFurn]

8 hours ago, ReefFish said:

What has been your baby RFA survival rate and are you feeding them anything special to help them grow I used Coralific Delite by Hikari and they seemed to grow faster

It’s hard to put a percentage on it but it’s gone way up since I got the nem box and started putting as many of them in there that I am able to. They are much safer in there, their wandering is fairly confined, and it makes it so easy to monitor and feed them. 

I’ve observed that only the super small ones (pin head size) that go in the box are at significant risk of not surviving. I give them 50/50 odds-but that’s way higher than if they were free in the tank. Larger ones in the box are probably at 80%.  Especially if they are of the size to have some color to them. 

If they don’t make it into the nem box, survival rate drops way down...maybe around 60%. But that takes monitoring, rescuing, and feeding every day. Even then, sometimes they just disappear. 

 

I will specualte and say the survival would be way lower than that if it was a typical reef tank and not set-up specifically for breeding (minimal rock, no caves, limited overhangs, etc) and providing the necessary attention to them. Probably goes without saying though.

 

I feed the babies a variety of foods...powdered coral food, decapsulated brine shrimp eggs, and mysis particles. Just switch it up occasionally. 

[BulkRate]

To SeaFurn's point - my tank is most definitely NOT optimized for baby rock flower survival rates.  They get predated upon by asterina starfish, get blown into blastomussa and hammer corals, they wander into darkness (caves), never to be seen again... that kind of thing.  My tank's spawning survival rate hangs around 5-10% and even then I occasionally have the dime-to-quarter size juvie that I thought was past the danger point suddenly start trucking for an unreachable & shadowed spot and starve itself.

 

I really, really need to rescape when/if I upgrade.  BTW - wow!  Definitely having a "student has become the master" kind of moment here, Seafurn.  😎