Ultra Rockflower babies everywhere!

[KPG007]

I've had these guys for a few years now and have had babies pop up from time to time. For those that don't know, Rockflower anemones don't split, they have babies.
Their old tank needed to be cleaned up and rebuilt, so a few days ago I carefully pulled them out of the sand and placed them in a small dish filled with rubble. A couple of days later I look and see this (look in the lower left hand corner):



Rockflower babies everywhere! Almost 40 of them from what I can tell. Apparently the blotchy green one on the left, which has been looking rather rough for the past few weeks, was ready to burst.

As usual with the babies, some are very plain, some have nice variants and some have a lot of variation and are considered ultras. These guys tend to take quiet a while to grow, with a high failure rate, so it will be interesting to see if many of them survive.

Here is a closer look:


Thanks for looking!

[Moogled]

Neat! Why the low success rate and if they make it to maturity, how long until they grow to the size of the ones in the photos?

[KPG007]

Originally Posted by Moogled

Neat! Why the low success rate and if they make it to maturity, how long until they grow to the size of the ones in the photos?

I don't know why the low success rate. Maybe bad tank conditions, predators or not enough of the right food. When they are little they move around a lot, so one day they are here, next day over there. Because of that, it's easy to loose them.
As for growth, I got most of them about the size of a quarter and it took about 6 - 12 months for them to grow to adult size. Females can get as big as the palm of your hand, where males are about half that.

I've had these guys for about 3 years now.

[jhj0112]

Originally Posted by KPG007

I don't know why the low success rate. Maybe bad tank conditions, predators or not enough of the right food. When they are little they move around a lot, so one day they are here, next day over there. Because of that, it's easy to loose them.
As for growth, I got most of them about the size of a quarter and it took about 6 - 12 months for them to grow to adult size. Females can get as big as the palm of your hand, where males are about half that.

I've had these guys for about 3 years now.

Is female always bigger than male? BTW awesome looking RFAs.

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[KPG007]

Thanks! Yes Females are always bigger. Another interesting fact is they breed in cycles. I believe its every 3 months (or is it 6?) the males will do their thing, releasing sperm for the females to collect. A few months later, babies start popping up. This event was really cool as I've never seen more then 10 -12 of them at a time.

[Potatohead]

That's pretty sweet