If you have an expanded, unrelaxed specimen in a dish, stimulate it with a gentle push from a probe or applicator stick. Watch its response. These grow slowly and differentiate into small anemones. An aquarium containing healthy Aiptasia will soon have numerous small pedal lacerates on its walls. Ask the instructor if pedal lacerates are available in the laboratory and examine them if so.
Anemones are hermaphroditic but each individual produces only one kind of gamete at any one time.
The gonads are longitudinal bands of gamete-producing tissue on the edges of the mesenteries just peripheral to the mesenterial filaments and central to the longitudinal muscles. The gonads are most often located on the incomplete mesenteries. Do not pour magnesium chloride in the aquarium. Anemones have remarkable regenerative powers and most of the dissected specimens will probably be as good as new in a few days. Visit the aquarium periodically over the next several days and watch their recovery.