How Do You Frag Coral?

[ylmaya]

I have read many threads on different TRT members splitting and fragmenting corals....is there a "how to" guide for this?

How do you do it? How do you know when a coral/mushroom/anemone is ready to be fragmented?

Lessons please......

[PaintGuru]

I will give you my unprofessional view on fragging. Basically any coral can be fragged, it is just a question if you have the guts to do it. Amenomes usually arent, they usually divide on their own if you are lucky enough. I will give you my general knowledge of the classes of corals.

SPS: These are the easiest as there is not real "meaty" flesh to cut and deal with. You basically just break off a chunk and like magic you have a frag. Most people will trade/sell frags that are 1-2" in height, best tool for this is some sort of cutter (bolt, wire, etc).

LPS: These I think are the trickiest because you have the flesh to deal with. Maybe people say it is not a scary as you think, but I am not about to lose my huge anchor coral just to frag it . What you would do here is cut the hard skeleton (again with cutters or hammer/chisle) and then you have to carefully cut the connecting tissue. Another option is to cut the skeleton and separate the 2 pieces while the flesh is still attached, then either put it in enough tension that the animal will seperate on its own over time, or I have heard of putting a rock on the flesh to speed it up. Again I am too chicken to do this, but I have heard it can be done. The easiest of the LPSs to frag are the branching kinds (torch, frogspawn, etc). These you just break off the branch, much like SPS.

Softies: These arent too bad, but a pain in the butt if you want to glue them to something. It is pretty easy to superglue/epoxy the hard skeletons to rock, but soft stuff is tough. Again here you can cut a piece off of a coral (colt, leather, etc) and let it grow into a new coral, or some, like xenia especially, will multiply on its own and spread around your tank. In that case you just put some loose rocks next to them, let them grow onto it, then you can trade/sell the rock as a frag.



As far as how you know it is ready for fragging, basically it is up to you. SPS can be regularly "trimmed" but of course you dont want to prune it too much or it will look stupid. Very similar to pruning plants, cut it down to where you like it and use the "cuttings" to create new plants/corals. Many people set up separate tanks of 10 or 20 or 50 gal size as frag tanks, just to keep track of the little pieces. Not only is there the added bonus of creating new corals without removing anything from the ocean, but it also can turn into a little money maker, especially with nice SPS colonies. Hope that helped a little, but if you do a search on any message board you will find lots of people discussing frags. And please, anyone else correct/add to my comments .

[Geoff]

PaintGuru pretty much summed it up.

when i drop a rock on a coral, that generally tells me it is time to frag.

i am a clutz.

G~

[Graham]

Most branching corals can be done with a needle-nose pliers. Just be sure they are dedicated to that purpose and that you clean them off good when done or they will last about 2 weeks before they are a nice shade of rust.

For thicker ones I have used a dremmel in the past, but that can get messy with burning coral flesh splattering all around ....I'd be interested to hear what others do to frag those stubby thick acros.

As for "when"? I don't like to frag them until they have been in my tank and growing well for about 6 months. Generally, I won't break off more than ~5% of the coral at any given time.

[mapster]

Picking up a copy of The Book of Coral Propagation by Anthony Calfo could help. This book covers cutting and mounting tricks for each family of coral. Many great ideas for setting up a frag tank too.

[karsco]

I would like to second Mapster's comments about Anthony Calfo's Coral Propagation book. I have even re-read many of the sections in this book because it so informative.