Isolating specific zoa attributes

[allan]

Not really truly scientific, but taking a page out of Mr Cob's book, Milly and I are trying to isolate a particular color.

The first picture shows the small colony of a zoa that we picked up from AD early last year. The quality is poor but you may be able to see a slight variance in coloration within the colony. The color rides the spectrum from pink to not pink. What I like about this coral is that it's very fleshy and large compared to most. But the circle of pink in the plate is what I'm after.

So Milly fragged out about three or four of these guys, attempting to pull just the pink ones. We've got a couple of frags healing up rather nicely. Once they start to grow, I plan on pulling the pinkest of the new zoas and running another iteration. As it is now, they grow different shades with no regard to what I want. My guess is that if I continue to cull the zoas that are pink, and grow them out, that I can isolate the specific gene to give me colonies of the pink zoas.

My reference to MCC above is third hand, but I had heard that he took some of the tri color war coral and isolated the pale blue portion in an attempt to get a solid light blue colony. That hasn't been validated yet.








Just thought of this, if you compare that zoa to the square next to it, discount the fact that it's just a little closer to the camera than the tile is, and the tile is 1" by 1"... you can get a pretty good idea of how big these things are. They're not massive, but they certainly don't get lost in your tank.

[Zack]

Is that how you get a certain morph of zoa? By fragging off the ones with the coloration you like? I've always been curious about how that worked.

[Mr Cob]

right on Allan. Yes, the tri-color war coral we acquired from the wild had red, burgundy and green/blue color with neon green eyes/mouths.

Over time I just kept fragging out the green/blue parts and after almost a year now the coral is holding strong as a blue/green with neon green eyes/mouths. I say "blue/green" because I can't tell which color it is...guess it's more like a teal. Anyways...the hybrid is now called MCC Ice War Coral.

I did the same with our spiderman colony. A polyp popped up with red eyes...I extracted it, let it growout and I got a mix, extracted 2 again and now 6 months later all polyps from the colony have red eyes. As babies they start with solid blue face and then develop the red eye. The main spiderman colony stays true to the blue face while the new colony has red eyes...named as: Spiderman's Gambit.

One of these days I want to start fusing corals. Like scolies and chalices. But...that will take some money that we don't really want to chance losing right now to trial and possibly error.

[Mr Cob]

I think your theory will work over time Allan. Just be patient and keep repeating the same steps. The tri-color war coral took almost a year and everytime I thought I had it some red would pop up...took awhile to get my Ice War Coral out of it. lol

[kkiel02]

Isnt this also what Tyree did to get his war coral so red? Sounds like a fun experiment either way! Keep us updated.

[Mr Cob]

yup

[Sherita]

I think I am going to do the same thing with a chalice I have. It is red, but in one spot there are beautiful purple streaks. I wonder if I frag that one spot off, when it grows, will the new growth also have purple streaks? Gonna find out I guess.