WHOA what are these?? Palys spawning?

A

Allen Michelle

I turned off the pump to feed, and found these floating on the surface of the water... what are these????
coral poop? eggs?

I caught them in a little plastic container and i think one of them broke open and little tiny specks came out (2nd pic)

the size of these are about 1/4~1/2 of a pencil eraser
 
omg! I found the source! Pink Palys spawning!
Every single frag of my pink palys are spitting out this egg looking thing... don't think it's poop since all the frags are doing it at the same time. Something is triggering the spawn!
 
wow, thats wild, how cool would it be if you could actually get some going. our fish breeder moves up to coral breeding :)
 
What kind of lighting do you have on this tank? Is there some sort of programmed moon light?
 
over how many gallons?? I have a 30 gallon cube that i'm about to shoot 150 to 175 watts over. In another of your old posts didn't you have a 30cube?
 
Whats next. are you going huge, or within reason?? Have you ever considered pegging for you zoo's?? I'm going to give it try on my 30cube.
 
http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S1519-69842005000100006&script=sci_arttext

This link is pretty technical but it is amazing to think that someone can make a career out of studying palythoas.

At the bottom they do talk about what may trigger spawning but they really don't have anything conclusive.
 
I agree, too technical for me. I was just hoping to find something that would confirm how they spawn, ie do they release eggs and sperm or is there a chance that the eggs are fertilized in the polyp and what they are releasing is kind of a spore that has many fertilized eggs in it.
 
Interesting..

"Oocytes and testis vesicles of both species can co-occur in the same mesentery and are distinguishable either by their coloration (sperm, white; eggs, yellow) or by a short margin between the regions. In the female gonad, the mesoglea and gastrodermis are slender next to the site in which the oocyte nucleus is located.

Both species had high percentages of fertile polyps, although in P. caribaeorum the polyps in the central region of the colonies were more fertile than those on the edges.



For both species, the largest percentage of polyps were female, but with different frequencies of fertile polyps between central and peripheral areas in the colonies of P. caribaeorum (Table 1). Male polyps were common in P. caribaeorum, but not in P. variabilis. Hermaphroditic polyps constituted the smallest percentage in P. caribaeorum; in P. variabilis they were the second most common."

They might actually be viable, but you'd want a settling tank or something like that where they can attach.
 
Very cool experience, and thanks for posting the pictures. Usually we only get to see this in nature, rather than in our tanks.

What size would you say those were? 1/16" in diameter?
 
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