Zooxanthellae Transplant w/ bleached Gigantea- Video

[Reefahholic]

 

[dylana407]

Cool. I was wondering how it is done. I hope you will update in the future.

 

[Wieloch89]

Are you going to post the update on this thread? Pretty cool

 

[Reefahholic]

Yes, I'll update in 1 month. Maybe he'll start to color up. You can also follow me on YouTube and get notified when the video is posted.

 

[Reefahholic]

Well, after doing some research of my own I became very intrigued with these symbiotic relationships. Some species can host a number of different symbiont types. In fact, I found that there's a classification of symbiotic dinoflagellates (Symbiodinium) composed of 9 major clades. Within each clade, there's evidence that suggest at least 160 distinct Symbiodinium types exist. I also learned that a single symbiont type can be found within multiple hosts. Although this supports that a Magnifica tentacle may indeed work for the transplant, I feel it's best to stick with the same species of anemone due to external parameters in the ocean. At the time, I didn't want to mess with Minh's nem. Anyway, these external parameters such as light intensity, temperature, location, depth, and water clairity have all been found to play a role in these symbiotic relationships. We know that Magnifica are not "usually" found in the same depths, light intensity, or even in the same location as Gigantea. Diversity of relationships... from specificity to flexibility Symbiodinium types have been identified to establish non-random relationships with host species. So just how broad is the diversity of symbiosis with Symbiodinium? That's a great question which got me looking into genetic diversity, diversity of relationships, specificity of the relationship, and flexibility of the relationship. I wanted to know exactly what kind of interactions took place between the partners? This got me looking into metabolic interactions. Then I looked at carbon, nitrogen, and Phosphate uptake and fixation. Then I started to wonder just how close this relationship actually was.?? I wondered how much each partner benefited from the other in terms of survival. How did the hosts and symbionts communicate with each other? Long story short, it's very in-depth and I'd like to understand and study it more. For now, I will feed the bleached gig another tentacle from my other gig. Look for the video this Friday night.