Ron Reefman's Rock Flower experience

Ron Reefman · Sep 23, 2020

sfin52 said:
I wonder if you contact them if they could work with one

I did that with Cultured Reef when I wanted to buy a group of RFAs. I think I bought 6 or 8 and the owner was willing to send me individual photos and let me pick. So it's always worth a try.

cpschult said:
Ron have you seen any decent rfa’s for sale around? I’d like to add some more color

I don't have any specific sites I can name. I think the higher end coral sellers online usually have some. And some are even WYSIWYG.

To be honest, with more than 35 of them in my 16g RFA breeding tank, I rarely look for them anymore. In fact, before this year, I only would buy them at frag swaps and shows where I could see them in person. And even then I would only buy extra fancy ones or very exotic ones because I already had lots of very nice ultras. My last purchase was at a show and it's a RFA with a deep burgundy oral disk (that doesn't fluoresce

), but it has gold (not yellow) tentacles with tiny bright green flecks of color in them and the tentacle fluoresce like crazy! I've never seen another one like it. But it was $125. ;Wideyed;Wideyed

Ron Reefman · Sep 23, 2020

ApoIsland said:
Forget the photo. Use your phone to take a video and then you can pause and go frame by frame until you get the shot you want. Then take a screenshot of the paused video. Much faster and easier to get that perfect pic.

I'll give that a try later today, thanks for the idea!

PicassoClown04 · Sep 23, 2020

cpschult said:
Ron have you seen any decent rfa’s for sale around? I’d like to add some more color

Aquatic Arsenal sells a good random pack for super cheap. Here’s what I got out of my pack

sfin52 · Sep 23, 2020

footgal said:
Aquatic Arsenal sells a good random pack for super cheap. Here’s what I got out of my pack

There is a local reefer who sells them a decent price as well. I also have purchased from saltcritters.

Tired · Sep 23, 2020

SaltCritters is good. KP Aquatics does packs. AquaSD has some cool ones, including some Pacific ones.

Daniel@R2R · Sep 23, 2020

footgal said:
Aquatic Arsenal sells a good random pack for super cheap. Here’s what I got out of my pack

Those are nice!

chizerbunoi · Sep 23, 2020

Gah I have been reading your awesome thread Ron for almost a month now and only made it to page 20 so far. Thank you for starting this. I can’t believe I missed it all these years.

Only got one to share which is starting to get its coloration back. Was in the back without light for 4 months.

cpschult · Sep 28, 2020

I have way more babies than I thought. I found a lot more on another rock!

Ron Reefman · Sep 29, 2020

chizerbunoi said:
Gah I have been reading your awesome thread Ron for almost a month now and only made it to page 20 so far. Thank you for starting this. I can’t believe I missed it all these years.

Only got one to share which is starting to get its coloration back. Was in the back without light for 4 months.

Thanks. It's always nice to read that somebody has gained something from this thread. My goal has been to try and make RFA easier to keep, not that many have issues keeping them. And even more important to me has been trying to understand the timing of their spawning and gestation period.

I love my RFA breeding tank with 35+ RFAs, but I also miss having all that color in my 90g DT! There is onlt 1 in there now... maybe I need to buy more?

PicassoClown04 · Sep 29, 2020

Ron Reefman said:
Thanks. It's always nice to read that somebody has gained something from this thread. My goal has been to try and make RFA easier to keep, not that many have issues keeping them. And even more important to me has been trying to understand the timing of their spawning and gestation period.

I love my RFA breeding tank with 35+ RFAs, but I also miss having all that color in my 90g DT! There is onlt 1 in there now... maybe I need to buy more?

you should totally buy more, you can never have too many...

sfin52 · Sep 29, 2020

Ron Reefman said:
Thanks. It's always nice to read that somebody has gained something from this thread. My goal has been to try and make RFA easier to keep, not that many have issues keeping them. And even more important to me has been trying to understand the timing of their spawning and gestation period.

I love my RFA breeding tank with 35+ RFAs, but I also miss having all that color in my 90g DT! There is onlt 1 in there now... maybe I need to buy more?

How long does it take for them to mature and spawn.

Ron Reefman · Sep 29, 2020

sfin52 said:
How long does it take for them to mature and spawn.

EXCELLENT question! I wish I could give you a good answer.

I have some 3 year old RFA that were born in my tank and they are about 1.5" in diameter. I doubt they are mature enough to spawn or carry young. But I really don't know and I don't think anybody on the planet can give you a good answer. RFAs just haven't been studied much.

Tired · Sep 29, 2020

I've heard of people having them spawn around 2-3", but 3-4" ones seem to more reliably spawn. It may depend on if they're male or female- a female would probably need to be reasonably large to carry more than a couple babies.

danieyella · Oct 2, 2020

Caught the tail end of this guy spawning - time to start the clock. Of course, by the time I realized what was going on it's probably too late - I did turn off the return for a bit though to see if I caught it in time. This is the 3rd largest in my tank, I have never seen either of the larger ones do this.

ApoIsland · Oct 3, 2020

Tired said:
I've heard of people having them spawn around 2-3", but 3-4" ones seem to more reliably spawn. It may depend on if they're male or female- a female would probably need to be reasonably large to carry more than a couple babies.

My first couple spawns happened when only the male was larger than 2 inches. You got more than 40 babies but of course that could have come from multiple mothers. I have a total of 9 rfa in the tank.

had a spawn last night. They are all much bigger now with the large orange male about 4-5 inches. Mine seem to all stand straight up during a spawning event so its easy to tell when it’s happening.

Ron Reefman · Oct 3, 2020

danieyella said:
Caught the tail end of this guy spawning - time to start the clock. Of course, by the time I realized what was going on it's probably too late - I did turn off the return for a bit though to see if I caught it in time. This is the 3rd largest in my tank, I have never seen either of the larger ones do this.

Nice that you at least saw the end of it.

And I can't tell you how much I would appreciate hearing the news (and total time) you have between this spawn and the delivery of babies. I'm going to suggest it will be between 28 and 35 days. Maybe you'll have Election Day babies!

Please keep us in the loop! And thanks.

ApoIsland said:
My first couple spawns happened when only the male was larger than 2 inches. You got more than 40 babies but of course that could have come from multiple mothers. I have a total of 9 rfa in the tank.

had a spawn last night. They are all much bigger now with the large orange male about 4-5 inches. Mine seem to all stand straight up during a spawning event so its easy to tell when it’s happening.

ApoIsland, I know you are knowledgeable about this stuff. And I'd really appreciate hearing back from you when babies are born. Good luck.

ApoIsland · Oct 3, 2020

Ron Reefman said:
ApoIsland, I know you are knowledgeable about this stuff. And I'd really appreciate hearing back from you when babies are born. Good luck.

Absolutely will report back Ron. This spawn happened within a couple days of the spawn last year so it seems the beginning of Oct may be a trigger for me. Could also be coincidence as I did just have another spawn a few months ago.

Seems like there was not nearly as much sperm released last night and the spawn from a couple months ago as compared to the spawn from last year. This could also just be the timing of my viewing as I did just catch the last 5-10 minutes. Of course I'm also not sure how long a spawn lasts either.

For the last 9 months I have had a copper banded butterfly which seemed to be hovering around the group and more aggressively picking at things around/under the adults so I suppose its not impossible he got most of the babies before I could notice them. Although that scenario doesn't seem logical as there are clearly 3 babies that he shows no interest in. Im considering moving him back to the sump for a couple months regardless though.