Induced Longitudinal Fission/Septembers Issue of The Marine Aquarium Magazine

ReeferRob · Sep 6, 2007

Did anyone else pick up the amazing September issue of The Marine Aquarium Magazine yet?

Its feature is Corallimorpharians!!! If you haven't and you love Yumas and Rics like I do you should.

Anyway the guy discusses a unique way to propogate rics using Induced Longitudinal Fission. Which I have done in the past, not induced but by accident! Anyway he talks about using a glue gun and is pictured doing so.

Has anyone else used hot glue before?
Is there a special type that is reef safe?

I want to try this because, one I have a small hot glue gun, two super glue rarely works and using reef epoxy isn't the easiest.

fishes2889 · Sep 6, 2007

need to pick one up....

Azurel · Sep 7, 2007

Yea I will have to look for it.....I don't think I will be doing any of that unless it was some cheap green ones....

Nomadic1 · Oct 8, 2007

ReeferRob said:
Did anyone else pick up the amazing September issue of The Marine Aquarium Magazine yet?

Its feature is Corallimorpharians!!! If you haven't and you love Yumas and Rics like I do you should.

Anyway the guy discusses a unique way to propogate rics using Induced Longitudinal Fission. Which I have done in the past, not induced but by accident! Anyway he talks about using a glue gun and is pictured doing so.

Has anyone else used hot glue before?
Is there a special type that is reef safe?

I want to try this because, one I have a small hot glue gun, two super glue rarely works and using reef epoxy isn't the easiest.

Describe the process, please... thanks.

Biertrinker · Oct 8, 2007

Hah, funny to run into this thread. About two weeks ago I took one of my rics that had grown onto a pebble a little off center. I glued another pebble onto a smaller piece of crushed coral the ric was attached to. The two pebbles were on opposite sides underneath the ric. I glued one of the pebbles to a rock and within three days, the ric stretched out and touched the ground beneath it. It reached the ground pretty easily after reshaping itself a bit, but didn't appear to be stretching much after that, so i broke off the pebble and re glued it about 3/4" higher on the rock. This time the ric was stretching and had a somewhat translucent section in the middle as pictured in the magazine article. I waited over a week for the reorganization to take place, but the mouth just moved to the middle of the stretched polyp. The stretched portion of the polyp slowly filled out with tentacles and no longer looked like it was stretching. I ended up with a distended 3" + long ric. I wish I had taken pics, but since the experiment failed for me, I guess it doesn't really matter. As of yesterday, I took the ric down and laid it flat hoping it will reshape. Maybe the ric I tried was too big and could too easily reshape before needing to split under the stress of stretching? Maybe I gave up too soon (2 weeks). One other observation, the ric also expelled a bit of zooxanthellae early in the process.

gflat65 · Oct 9, 2007

Yeah, the trick is that the ric is already attached to pebbles. You're gluing pebbles to rocks to force the split (as Biertrinker describes). Set them in crushed coral for a week or so in low to med flow and they'll attach to something you can glue. I think that if you can get the pebbles near the center of th epolyp (not much say in it-rule of chance) and glue one pebble to a rock to let the other pebble serve as the gravtiy forced stretch to split it. If the pebbles are close together on the polyp, they should stretch better without elongating. I'm working on a mini R. florida prop project

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Biertrinker · Oct 9, 2007

Gflat- Good idea about having the pebbles closer together in the center. That could have been the problem with mine. I would like to try it again, but my girlfriend fipped when she saw what I did to her "favorite" ric. Funny, she doesn't even seem to notice the tank unless something goes wrong.

ReeferRob · Oct 9, 2007

Wow, great to see that others are experimenting with this!
Great feedback!

Biertrinker · Nov 1, 2007

Interesting developement- the ric that became extended and a little distorted from my attempt at induced fission grew two new mouths at either end with the original mouth in the middle. I saw the new mouths about a week after my last post. Since then, the ric has taken a shape best described as a snow man with three individual polpys starting to appear, although the fission is still not complete.

currentking · Nov 1, 2007

I have some that I just cut in half and they grew back just fine. I took one of my expensive orange yumas and cut it in half. it took about 2 weeks to fully heal and get all of its color back and become fully round but they both recovered and are doing fine. The important part is once you glue them you need to leave them in the sand bed for about a wweek or to to heal then you must glue them to a rock or they will not get any bigger. The one I glued to the rock is back to its origional size and the one I left in the sand bed is healthy but has not grown very much.

THE BEAUT · Nov 2, 2007

I agree with currentking. I have propped many FL rics AND yumas. Very easy just us a scalpal or razor blade and cut it into 4 right through the middle. Sometimes i dont even get a piece of the mouth. Put them on some rubble with very little flow and in a couple of weeks they should have attached. I have propped my expensive yuma a couple of times now. With the expensive yumas i would suggest just one cut, in half to reduce the stress a little. Dont do it if you are not ok with losing your prize yuma or rick.Its not for the faint at heart. That being said, I have had great success. Azurel actually has one of my propped pink yumas.

Azurel · Nov 2, 2007

I didn't know that's how you did that one......I thought it was a natural baby.....Much braver then I am for sure....

THE BEAUT · Nov 2, 2007

James it was the baby that i propped into two. You got one and i still have the other. That i actually propped again. So by all due respects that one baby became 4. I dont think i would have had the courage to cut the mother. My thinking was if i lost the baby i still had the mother. Here they are.

Biertrinker · Nov 2, 2007

Before slicing the polyp itself, do ya'll cut the polyp off the foot on the rock, or try to peel the foot off keeping the entire animal intact before slicing? I keep reading online about the importance of splitting the foot, not the mouth, which seems odd to me. Also, any experience with cutting multimouthed polyps? I havent tried it yet, but I have a few polyps with multiple mouths almost touching that I am thinking about splitting right between the mouths.