Feeding bleached RTBA zooanthallae from a surrogate coral?

Youngsilver · #1 02/09/2006, 08:10 AM

Would it be possibel to reintroduce zooanthallae to a bleached RTBA by feeding it healthy coral tissue, from a surrogate frag or something? Maybe mush up a little tissue from a frag and immediatly mix it into some frozen food just before feeding. A fellow member of the local reef club had rememebered seeing an article on this, but couldnt remember where. If possible and feasible, would it have to be a coral from the same geographic location? could the coral tissue "sting" the anemone internally enough to outway the possible positive outcome? Any thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated.

RiddleLabs · #2 02/09/2006, 02:01 PM

Aloha Youngsilver,

See the Feature Article in January's Advanced Aquarist (www.advancedaquarist.com) and see if you can match a zooxanthellae type from your anemone with those found in a coral. Some zooxanthellae species/clades are common, while others are host-dependent.

Infecting the anemone with coral zoox is theoretically possible if a match is made (think of it as matching the bloodtype in humans).
Good luck, and keep us posted.

Dana

Travis L. Stevens · #3 02/09/2006, 02:12 PM

What if you fail to match it properly? Is it just consumed?

Julio · #4 02/09/2006, 05:32 PM

why not just leave it alone and let nature takes its course? Plus anemones do not feed off theri zooanth... since they require meaty foods to sustain themselve.

RiddleLabs · #5 02/09/2006, 06:02 PM

The question was not "if" it should be done. Instead, the question is "is it possible?". So, yes, theoretically it can be done.
The anemone must recognize the zooxanthellae clade as "self", else the zooxanthellae will be digested/expelled/not used by the anemone.

Anemones generally benefit from their symbionts (and vice versa). Technically Julio's statement is correct - zooxanthellae are not a food source. Instead they are a source of "food" (in the forms of certain amino acids, glycerol, etc.).

One could go down the path and argue that anemones do not require zooxanthellae and *might* survive with adequate food sources. But then, that is not natural for many anemone species and a symbiotic relationship gives the animal benefits.

Dana

Youngsilver · #6 02/10/2006, 09:53 AM

ok, so one question: The RBTA is stated as being a C clade, would a C1 clade work, or would it specifically have to be C?

RiddleLabs · #7 02/10/2006, 02:29 PM

Aloha Youngsilver,

I'll try to find further info on the exact clade type. I don't have that literature here, so it seems that BTAs' zooxanthellae haven't been typed to sub-clade level (yet). Try one of the pandemic zoox clades (C1, C3? - doing this from memory).

Dana

Youngsilver · #8 02/10/2006, 07:25 PM

appearently everything in my tank is C1 clade

Youngsilver · #9 02/10/2006, 09:32 PM

Ok, so just an update, I had a toadstool leather, Sarcophyton trocheliophorum, i fragged of a "bud" from its base, approximately 3/8 inch tall and 1/4' in. diameter. I took approx. 1/2 a cube of mysis also. I dropped the frag into the anemone, when it started to close I then stuck in the mysis, it closed up on both foods, now awaiting the results

RiddleLabs · #10 02/10/2006, 10:50 PM

Aloha Youngsilver,

Please keep us posted - this is of course of interest to hobbyists, but the implications go well beyond reefkeeping. Students of hypotheses such as the Adaptive Bleaching Hypothesis (ABH) would be interested in hearing the results. This experiment wouldn't prove or disprove anything, but it is a data point.

Dana

Youngsilver · #11 02/11/2006, 12:18 AM

Yes, I read a paper on Adaptive Bleaching Hypothesis earlier today. The hypothesis that things bleach under too high light or low light or tepmurature cahnges,so that a better zooathallae replacement can be found for the particular lighting or temp. needs, is what made me brave enough to try it. If this theory holds true, then a coral/ anemone with one specifi C clade can "trade" it for a different C clade variation that better suites its new conditions

As far as data goes, imma gonna rant a minute

: IMO we know the little we know presently due to the fact that scientists cant just pull a hundred of these animals out the wild, bleach them then try different things to replenish them. A bleached anemone is potentially gonna die, and too many animals would be killed to try to do enough tests to determine exactly what bleaching is and why it happens. As reefkeepers, relying on Biologists to help us with certain things, I feel it is our duty sometimes to return and give them all the data they need/want about our tanks and their inhabitants. The reefkeeping world is still to "young" to try to say this or this is "jsut how it is" the fact is we jsut dont know certain things. In a perfect world, all reefkeepers would be logging/documenting every changein their tanks, but unfortunately that doesnt happen. When someone says let nature take its course, this is a less risky move, but the animals survival rate being bleached is not that good, so lets risk it, hopefully so that something can be learned for the next guy who is in the same situation. Imagine if enough people whos anemones had died had tried risky things to get it back to good health, think of all the data we would have now and possibly even a sure fire way to replenish zooanthallae per different anemone sp.

Youngsilver · #12 02/14/2006, 05:27 AM

well, haha that didnt work, noting has happened

I guess that if ingested with food, zooanthallae could be totally digested. i will wait a few weeks, and try it without food the brine shrimp, and only using the "head" of the toadstool bud, no "stalk". Of coarse I am still assuming that the RBTA is the C1 (common) clade of zooanthallae, sinceI can't find any data on what specific C clade it is.

Travis L. Stevens · #13 02/14/2006, 10:36 AM

I would assume that this would take quite a while. After obtaining new zooxanthallae algae, it would need to manifest it into it's body/tentacles. From there it would need to "farm" them in order to produce an amount concentrated enugh to visibly see any new coloring.

Fred_J · #14 02/15/2006, 01:22 AM

I received a completely bleached rock/flower anemone a year ago. As far as I could tell it was completely white. I went ahead and put it into the display tank. In less than a month it had turned brown (I was a little disappointed in the color). It has done very well until about 3 weeks ago when its mouth was stuck on the return of my fluval. It has refused to eat since then.
It's possible there was a small amount of zooanthallae hidden inside of it. The all bright white anemone was beautiful.
Fred

Ira NZ · #15 02/15/2006, 10:03 AM

I think the best way to do it would be to get a healthy anemone of the same species, snip off a dozen or so tentacles and then you'd have the right species of zoox. I don't know if feeding it to the bleached anemone would get it into it though... Ideal would be to chop of the tentacles then centrifuge them to seperate the zoox then use a syringe to inject the zoox directly into the bleached anemone.

Of course, most of use don't have a centrifuge...

Youngsilver · #16 02/15/2006, 10:07 AM

nor a spare RBTA for we can borrow some tenticles from :P

Khai · #17 02/16/2006, 03:55 AM

I only skimmed the paper, which seemed to be a cool application of well established DNA profiling techniques to marine biology. Your idea is a cool one and really creative, I'd say give it a go. The theory assumes that the nem has the capability to recognize potentially symbiotic bacteria held within its stomach, prevent them from digestion and then relocalize them to the correct locations.

All of these processes are deeply involved at the molecular level. As an example, Human cells have symbiotic 'bacteria' also; mitochondria*. If you attempted to eat these in the hope of boosting your metabolic capabilities, well...its not likely they would do anything but taste bad. What I'm basically saying it might not even matter if you matched the clade correctly. All of the bacteria may be capable of inducing the response, or perhaps none of them. Its also possible the nem may rely upon dormant bacterial populations to repopulate the symbiotes after bleaching, this might mean that there isn't even a molecular process for the integration of ingested bacteria...

With that said, I am amazed by the capability of some of these marine animals to selectively transport ingested cells, the movement of nematocysts on nudibranchs is a really cool and amazing example, I would love to understand how, or read any papers that someone has...

Just my 2 cents, I work on nano-engineering applications of molecular biology, not really a marine biology guy. There is a ton of interesting papers out there published on symbiotic interactions at the molecular level. Check out NF-kB to get you started.

*Obviously no longer an independent cell, but hypothesized to be the result of a eucaryotic cell phagocytosing a procaryotic cell capable of oxidative phosphorylation. All this assumes that evolution occured of course...Hah!

Youngsilver · #18 02/16/2006, 07:19 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Youngsilver
Yes, I read a paper on Adaptive Bleaching Hypothesis earlier today. The hypothesis that things bleach under too high light or low light or tepmurature cahnges,so that a better zooathallae replacement can be found for the particular lighting or temp. needs, is what made me brave enough to try it. If this theory holds true, then a coral/ anemone with one specifi C clade can "trade" it for a different C clade variation that better suites its new conditions

Only my opinion, as I only skimmed the paper also :P