RBTA Splitting Advice Please

thekeywork · Jan 3, 2018

I have a 7" RTBA that is bigger than I would like it to be in my tank. I tried the advice to feed it heavily for a week and then do a water change to encourage it to split. That was about 3 months ago. Initially, it seemed like it would split. It inflated and deflated several times during the following week. The mouth looked odd and now it clearly has two mouths.....but that's all. Its been sitting in that state for 2 and a half months now. Is there anything else I can do to encourage it to split? Should I manually propagate it?

Tahoe61 · Jan 3, 2018

I would just leave it be.

thekeywork · Jan 3, 2018

The problem is, if it gets too much bigger, it's going to start stinging a rather costly acropora colony. I don't want to have to move either, which is why I was encouraging the split.

Tahoe61 · Jan 3, 2018

Well than you're going to end up with two anemones with the potential move around and grow large. If this is a nano tank and you want to keep Acropora you might have to choose one over the other. BTA ime move when cloning, that is how they literally tear themselves apart. These were my large BTA in the process of cloning.

I did not overly feed them, they just splitting every 6 months or so.

Kremis · Jan 4, 2018

you could try propogating it, but im not really sure how to do that. it most likely would go well being that it already has the two mouths.

Lance M. · Jan 4, 2018

thekeywork said:
I have a 7" RTBA that is bigger than I would like it to be in my tank. I tried the advice to feed it heavily for a week and then do a water change to encourage it to split. That was about 3 months ago. Initially, it seemed like it would split. It inflated and deflated several times during the following week. The mouth looked odd and now it clearly has two mouths.....but that's all. Its been sitting in that state for 2 and a half months now. Is there anything else I can do to encourage it to split? Should I manually propagate it?

If you were going to manually propagate it, you would still need to remove it from the tank so you may just want to relocate it to somewhere it has more room, hoping that it doesn't move again once moved to the new location assuming the tank is large enough to have a spot like that. I prefer to move coral over anemones as the anemones can just move on their own. 3 of my rbta's are on smallish rocks and love their rocks so if I had to I could easily move the rock with the nem on it. My larger gbta is in a bigger rock with a large crevice so it is more difficult to move and re position the rock but it's in a position were I don't need to move it.

Like said above, if you do split it then you will now have two anemones that could get large and move around instead of just one.

thekeywork · Jan 25, 2018

Well, it split all on it's own last night. When I left the tank at 6pm it looked huge and in one piece and when I came in in the morning there were two. Took the bigger half out and sold it to a local reefer this afternoon. Thanks for the advice guys. Hopefully I'll never have to do a manual propagation, but if I ever do, I'll do it before it grows a second mouth.