***I apologize if someone already came up with this idea, and if you know who did please post it here.***
While looking at my PPE and wanting it to expand quicker I came up with an idea that I felt may work. I local reef club member is very successful at propagating RBTAs by cutting them in half and allowing the pieces to heal. Then I thought to myself, there is no way a polyp could withstand being cut in half, but then I remembered a previous experience with a hungry sexy shrimp who ate half of a polyp of one of my zoas.I thought the polyp was a gonner but I kept it in my tank and got the sexy shrimp out of there. After 2 days the polyp closed the cut end. By the next week I could see it growing stubby tentacles, and by the end of the 3rd week it was back to its glory. I was amazed.
So this gave me the idea that I could slice my PPE in half and have it survive the cut. So I picked a sample victim that I could experiment on and not worry about losing. RPE it was!
This was a Previous Experiment:
Step 1
Pull it out of the water still expanded so I could see the mouth. I wanted to cut perpendicular to the mouth just like they do with BTA cuttings.
Step 2
Cut it as described above with a new clean razor blade. So far so good
Step 3
Place back into the water and cross your fingers.
Now it was a waiting game to monitor its progression.
24 Hrs Later the polyp was still full, but the two halves were butting up against one another.
1 week later the two halves had joined together and reformed a single polyp... arghhh. While these results were positive, because the polyp survived, I did not end up with two single polyps.
then 1 week +
2 Weeks after the experiment the polyp was full and open again. It survived this trial but I had to figure out a way to keep the two sides separate. The only question that I still had left was if the polyp survived because the two sides came together or if it would survive no matter what.
While looking at my PPE and wanting it to expand quicker I came up with an idea that I felt may work. I local reef club member is very successful at propagating RBTAs by cutting them in half and allowing the pieces to heal. Then I thought to myself, there is no way a polyp could withstand being cut in half, but then I remembered a previous experience with a hungry sexy shrimp who ate half of a polyp of one of my zoas.I thought the polyp was a gonner but I kept it in my tank and got the sexy shrimp out of there. After 2 days the polyp closed the cut end. By the next week I could see it growing stubby tentacles, and by the end of the 3rd week it was back to its glory. I was amazed.
So this gave me the idea that I could slice my PPE in half and have it survive the cut. So I picked a sample victim that I could experiment on and not worry about losing. RPE it was!
This was a Previous Experiment:
Step 1
Pull it out of the water still expanded so I could see the mouth. I wanted to cut perpendicular to the mouth just like they do with BTA cuttings.
Step 2
Cut it as described above with a new clean razor blade. So far so good
Step 3
Place back into the water and cross your fingers.
Now it was a waiting game to monitor its progression.
24 Hrs Later the polyp was still full, but the two halves were butting up against one another.
1 week later the two halves had joined together and reformed a single polyp... arghhh. While these results were positive, because the polyp survived, I did not end up with two single polyps.
then 1 week +
2 Weeks after the experiment the polyp was full and open again. It survived this trial but I had to figure out a way to keep the two sides separate. The only question that I still had left was if the polyp survived because the two sides came together or if it would survive no matter what.