Zooxanthellae Transplant for Bleached Anemones

[Shawn O]

Not having another Anemone to do a transplant from, how would I take a donor sample and transport it home without losing the Zooxanthellae? Just in a ziplock full of tank water?

[OrionN]

I think keeping it from drying out ans use it as soon as you get home would be the thing to do. Make sure you thaw the food in tank water and the temp of the food is at tank temperature to keep the zooxanthellae from getting temperature and salinity shock.

[Shawn O]

OK, great thanks. If my new BTA doesn't color up after a month or two I'll look into this further. Thanks Minh.

[XIONGGOTSTYLE]

You could also try phycopure zooxanthelle. I heard its pretty good.

[manfrog]

What is this "phycopure" of which you speak? I hope it isn't anything like "phocomelia".

[York1]

Originally Posted by manfrog

What is this "phycopure" of which you speak? I hope it isn't anything like "phocomelia".

phycopure zooxanthelle is a bottled live zooxanthelle culture. Google it and you will find many store now sell it

[OrionN]

I doubt that any zooxanthellae will remain a live in a bottle for very long, if they are alive to begin with.

[gabloo]

Thank you for sharing this information. This is very interesting. Following!

[AwkwardZombie13]

Should I be concerned about this BTA that I have? It was white when I bought it from the store..... Since then it has grown...seems really happy where it is. extends out more, is "bubbly" which I take to be a good sign.... Everything else in my tank seems to be doing great. Water parameters are great. Calcium levels are fine. lighting is great. my other BTA is still colorful and happy.... just worried that i might need to be concerned with this little guys color....

[OrionN]

I am not sure the actual color of this anemone, however there seem to be a little brown that I see. He will be fine. He is not 100% bleached and should recover given good condition. Update if you can.

[ThRoewer]

Originally Posted by OrionN

I doubt that any zooxanthellae will remain a live in a bottle for very long, if they are alive to begin with.

They can:
http://burr.bio.buffalo.edu/index.php/cultures/

[OrionN]

Originally Posted by ThRoewer

They can:
http://burr.bio.buffalo.edu/index.php/cultures/

I am sure that someone will be able to isolate and growth cultures of Zooxanthellae, like the scientists in the link you provided above. However, I do not think that the bottle of

Algagen PhycoPure™ Zooxanthellae (Assorted species) Item: BEH-84761(as per Live Aquaria)
would provide live or usable strains of zooxanthellae as claimed.
I think isolate growing them in control setting is one thing, but then bottle them up and put them on shelf of stores where they are in there, non aerated, no temp control, no light for days, weeks or months; any living organism in there would be long gone by the time we dump it into our tank. My most likely guess would be we just dump some expensive dirty water into our tank.


While I maybe completely wrong about this but I have attempt to keep living culture of various organism before. Each organism does have very specific condition where it thrive at. For cultures of this sort, having verified viable sample, transport overnight in thermally isolated condition is likely need to keep it viable. Also, there are a numbers of Zooxanthellae strains. Those that living in one coral, even of the same species, may not be the same as those that live in another coral. There also evidence of a numbers of species of Zooxanthellae living in the same host.


This is part of the disclaimer of the Scientist that culture these zooxanthellae. If you want to request a sample, you must agree in written before they transfer a sample of these zooxanthellae to you:



Transfer of BURR Cultures Agreement FormName: ________________________________________________________________Email address: __________________________________________________________Phone number: __________________________________________________________Address to ship samples:FedEX (or other overnight courier) Number: _________________________________List of cultures requested:Culture IDClade/cp-type*Culture ID Clade/cp-type**cp-type- symbiont strain based on fragment size of hypervariable region of chloroplast 23S rDNACost - $90.00 per culture plus a $13.00 administrative fee Summary of intended use of cultures:You acknowledge that many of our cultures are not axenic or well characterized. Furthermore, our cultures are not necessarily representative of the symbionts within the host from which they were isolated. We have verified this for somecultures, but not for all. This point is important when reporting any findings from these cultures. However, if you agree to several things, then I am happy to authorize the transfer

[ThRoewer]

Originally Posted by OrionN

I am sure that someone will be able to isolate and growth cultures of Zooxanthellae, like the scientists in the link you provided above. However, I do not think that the bottle of

Algagen PhycoPure™ Zooxanthellae (Assorted species) Item: BEH-84761(as per Live Aquaria)
would provide live or usable strains of zooxanthellae as claimed.
I think isolate growing them in control setting is one thing, but then bottle them up and put them on shelf of stores where they are in there, non aerated, no temp control, no light for days, weeks or months; any living organism in there would be long gone by the time we dump it into our tank. My most likely guess would be we just dump some expensive dirty water into our tank.

The first bottle I got from LiveAquaria was dead. But then Algagen sent me a fresh replacement and the algae in that one were alive.
However, they failed to infect the anemone I had gotten them for.
So I would say it is rather unlikely to get a benefit from these whether they are alive or not.

Originally Posted by OrionN

While I maybe completely wrong about this but I have attempt to keep living culture of various organism before. Each organism does have very specific condition where it thrive at. For cultures of this sort, having verified viable sample, transport overnight in thermally isolated condition is likely need to keep it viable. Also, there are a numbers of Zooxanthellae strains. Those that living in one coral, even of the same species, may not be the same as those that live in another coral. There also evidence of a numbers of species of Zooxanthellae living in the same host.

...

There has and still is a lot of research done on this in regards to coral bleaching and the results are so far that there are some coral that have a very specific Symbiodinium mix while others are open to a large variety of types and strains.
Given that host anemones are more scattered over the reefs and in the high intensity light range I could see them to be less specific. For example, I'm quite certain that a bleached crispa I once had acquired symbionts from a neighboring Anthelia colony. The re-colonization/colorization started precisely in those tentacles that frequently got in contact with the Anthelia. So it didn't only cross a species barrier but went to a quite distant genus.
Geographic origin may possibly have more to do with it than species.

[ThRoewer]

So I got a new magnifica that isn't bleached and took 2 or 3 tentacles from it and injected them with a syringe into the gastral cavity of my bleached magnifica. The tentacles stayed wet all the time and it took only a couple of seconds from harvest to injection.

I have to go with injecting the transplants this way since the magnifica doesn't have a strong enough feeding reflex to actually grab food and put it into her mouth. Aside from that, the bicinctus steal or fan away any food I put into the anemone.

The injection was a week ago but so far I can't see any success of the procedure.
To make matters worse, the new anemone has started deflating so I will likely have to treat it ... which may lead to it bleaching as well...

I had tried feeding my other bleached anemone, a gigantea from LA, a few tentacles from my healthy giganteas about a months ago, but the transfer also didn't take.

[Gkatalifos]

Awesome post Thank you for the info!

[Yuri Barros]

great thread.......

the French Polynesia have a non described Orange Fin Anemonefish species.....

these places are suffering severe bleaching of (Heteractis magnifica)......

Zooxanthellae transplanting could be the solution......this non described species is already threatened...........

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnYECI875RU

[laverda]

Very interesting. I wonder if chopping up or even blending a tenticals or two would work better at transferring the zooxanthellae?
While I have 30+ BTAs none are bleached. The ones lower in my tank are lighter in color but color up quickly when the move higher up in the tank.

[hottuna]

So : ThRoewer: are you saying that if a bleached gig comes and snuggles up to one with zooxanthelle the transfer will occur ? that is what I have going on now in my tank,,1 healthy green and a bleached gig making lots of continous contact with it...will it work ?? anyone ?

[OrionN]

Originally Posted by hottuna

So : ThRoewer: are you saying that if a bleached gig comes and snuggles up to one with zooxanthelle the transfer will occur ? that is what I have going on now in my tank,,1 healthy green and a bleached gig making lots of continous contact with it...will it work ?? anyone ?

I am not ThRoewer but since I started this thread I will try to answer your question.
We know that corals and anemone will internalize Zooxanthellae from the water by internalized. We know that baby clams will feed and get zooxanthellae from the clam farmers blender an adult clams to feed the babies.
Bleached anemones will eventually get zooxanthellae from the healthy anemone eventually. However if you want to give a large amount of zooxanthellae quickly the cut a few tentacles of the healthy anemone and feed it to the bleached one.
Be careful to keep the zooxanthellae in the cut tentacles variable by not get it dry out, temp or salinity shock. If you are able to do this and your anemone s of the same species the transplant will be effective a great majority of the time. I have done this about 10 times and only have 1 failure and thinking back I know h TTh e reason for my failure as documented in this thread.

[hottuna]

ok, thnx..will the bleached gig just ingest tentacles from a healthy one or does it need to be mixed with food ?

[OrionN]

However you get the anemone to ingest the tentacle. In a piece of food is easiest. I learn from doing this thread:
Don’t let the tentacle dry out, even slightly. This really change the salinity and stress/kill the zooxanthellae. Best to keep them in tank water.
Thawn the frozen food in tank water first. Don’t let the Zooxanthellae experience temp shock or the thaw out ice crystal in the Food result in salinity shock.
Zooxanthellae are fairly wimpy and will die if they experience any of this and result in a fail transplant.
Normally it just take me second. Trying to document these with camera results in prolong process and failure for me.

[hottuna]

It works !!! about 10 days after I fed my bleached gig a few tentacles from my green gig mixed with food...he's got that "dirty" look to the the tentacles..it's only in patches -but it's there I fed it yesterday and it devoured the food..I'm optimistic about a recovery..For those who have been through this process : how long does it take until the nem fully recovers all it's zoo ?? and resembles what we consider to be a healthy gig ?

[OrionN]

I am glad it works for you. It always work for me too.

[alehner529]

So if you don't have a second anemone to transplant with, is there ever any hope of the anemone regaining its zoos on its own?

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[alehner529]

Originally Posted by alehner529

So if you don't have a second anemone to transplant with, is there ever any hope of the anemone regaining its zoos on its own?

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Forgot to mention that it is a maxi mini carpet anemone, we have had it for about 4 years.

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