I come bearing gifts
Not too long ago, I bought two Green Bubble Tip Anemones (GBTA). I placed them in my tank and once they found a home they liked, they attached themselves to a piece of rock at the top of my tank and setup shop.
Then, they gave me a gift – they both split at nearly the same time so now I have 4 GBTA’s. To put it another way, 4 for the price of 2. Once the two babies are healed and healthy – I’ll judge that by them staying attached to the rock and eating the table shrimp I feed them – I’ll sell them to make the money back I spent on my “mother” anemones.
I was lucky enough to be around to watch them split and below is the sequence of events I captured via pictures. Total elapsed time was about 4 hrs.
Starting to split:
Green Bubble Tip Anemone splitting
About half way done. Note that the anemone is splitting through its mouth so that each new anemone has a place to feed itself.
Step #2 of GBTA splitting
Last step. Now there are 2 distinct anemones.
Last step
How does a protein skimmer work
Hi Mark, I’ve harvested a Snakelocks anemone from Wales (coldwater, very cool, hundreds of them in rockpools) and put it in my just cycled 12G warm tank and in two weeks with once a week feeding and snacks on copepods it divided. I’ve been told by my LFS it’s illegal to harvest from the Uk shoreline, so I’m planning to return one of them to the sea (people are selling them and Actinia on eBay uk). Also, same LFS told me it’s a bad sign they’re dividing, that they are unhappy. Any thoughts?