Acropora spawn!

Sabellafella · Feb 2, 2019

Hello! Very intrigued as for last night, I had my acropora spawn and almost overfill my filter socks for the second time in basically a week. Documented it on my build thread. Found some eggs floating around during the eclipse we had recently. Did my fair share of fragging the last few days and am finding egg sacks inside my acros. Took a quick peek last night, and found hundreds of orange blobs piled up against the glass on the water surface. Also flying out of my large wwc yellow tip colony just like I've seen on the acropora spawn videos. Very proud of this. This hobby continues to peak my interest after 7 total years of having aquariums. Has anyone experienced this? Would be a great topic to discuss. I have a cup, water surface filled with eggs that now settled today. Don't know what I'm doing, but would be really neat to try giving them a shot at growing

sean rand · Feb 2, 2019

Following

andrewkw · Feb 2, 2019

Super cool!

saltyhog · Feb 2, 2019

That is awesome! Congratulations @Sabellafella !

JPergamo · Feb 2, 2019

Wow! I guess you are doing something right very cool.

tripdad · Feb 2, 2019

Very cool! Hope they settle and develop into planula(?). Thanks for sharing!

Bj’s Reef · Feb 2, 2019

This is so interesting, I’m going to follow along to see how it works out.

Sabellafella · Feb 3, 2019

tripdad said:
Very cool! Hope they settle and develop into planula(?). Thanks for sharing!

Ok guys so it's been about 24 hours, the few I collected in a small plastic cup turned white and look to be flattened, attached to the inside of the cup. Now from what I've read, the larva is supposed to gather food before they settle (up to a month). I'll need a microscope for something like this lol!. Very likely me trying to wing it would not work, maybe something could settle in my tank. I also should add some dead coraline algae flakes, or maybe a frag plug into the cup. Either way, my rrc pink Cadillac was spawning also. What I find odd, it was just a wee frag a little over a year ago. So what grades maturity for something like this? The colony photod Is the size of a football, almost 4 years old now. First time this has ever happened.

Rick.45cal · Feb 3, 2019

Awesome man, I’ll be following along.

Dsnakes · Feb 3, 2019

That’s awesome, I’m looking forward to the progression.

peppe_67 · Feb 3, 2019

Fantastic[emoji847] I'll be following this.

Sallstrom · Feb 3, 2019

Nice! I've seen egg bundles when fragging a large Acropora staghorn colony at work(public aquaria), but never seen the actual spawning. I need to spend more evenings at work

Here's a pretty new article on getting Acropora to spawn in aquariums:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5743687/

I think @Thales has been involved in a similar project at Steinhart Aquarium.

Thales · Feb 3, 2019

Cool stuff!

Sabellafella said:
Ok guys so it's been about 24 hours, the few I collected in a small plastic cup turned white and look to be flattened, attached to the inside of the cup. Now from what I've read, the larva is supposed to gather food before they settle (up to a month).

Sound like they developed and settled quickly. They don't eat before they settle, and there is a wide range of settling times. After they settle the need to uptake zoox. If they are really settled on the cup, you can cut the cup and glue the piece with the settler down to something more convenient.

It's hard for me to see what is going on in those pictures - do you have more?

Sabellafella · Feb 3, 2019

Thales said:
Cool stuff!

Sound like they developed and settled quickly. They don't eat before they settle, and there is a wide range of settling times. After they settle the need to uptake zoox. If they are really settled on the cup, you can cut the cup and glue the piece with the settler down to something more convenient.

It's hard for me to see what is going on in those pictures - do you have more?

I have a 3 minute video i need to upload. Hopefully very soon ill be getting it into youtube, then up on here. But heres some quick photos. Its just unfortunate it happened so quickly, just pulled out a flashlight and camera. Sat there for about 10 minutes in Awe untill my phone storage lost space. Started deleting stuff on my phone and pulling eggs from the water surface. In the video i said to myself muliple times if it would be wise to turn my lights on to get a more detailed look. The flashlight basically screwed with the quality of my photos and videos.

Sabellafella · Feb 3, 2019

Heres some of the eggs against my DT glass

reef lover · Feb 3, 2019

This is awesome!!

Bj’s Reef · Feb 3, 2019

I can’t wait to see the video.

Bj’s Reef · Feb 3, 2019

What are the conditions in your tank?

Sabellafella · Feb 3, 2019

Sallstrom said:
Nice! I've seen egg bundles when fragging a large Acropora staghorn colony at work(public aquaria), but never seen the actual spawning. I need to spend more evenings at work
Here's a pretty new article on getting Acropora to spawn in aquariums:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5743687/

I think @Thales has been involved in a similar project at Steinhart Aquarium.

Very fantastic read so far. Have you guys ever tried to collect the spawn? I believe the long island aquarium uses a fine net certain times throughout the year. I've always read the aquarium socialized articles on coral reproduction, find it very fascinating. Although most things you can't put a finger on, I found eggs just like how I photoed up against the glass - the night after the eclipse. There's so much more involved with what goes on, that I'm having trouble understanding this topic.