Surgical seperation of Branching Hammer

[Hommeworks]

This weekend I picked up a Branching Hammer coral. It is a large piece, with many flowers. For anyone familar with this species could you recommend how to seperate the piece into smaller ones. I'd like split off the different flowers and distribute in multiple locations in the display. Not sure if I should saw, break, or cut at specific locations on the stalk. Will I be risking shocking the animal to death. Don't want to kill it.

[TimBeR]

I have seen people including myself just grab a branch near the base and break it off then use the marine epoxy to seel the base and the brach broken off and I have also read of people using a dremel with a ziz wheel on it cut the branch off near the base. either way be very carfull not to grab any of the fleshy parts and do your best if using a dremel not to get the dust iinto the flesh. and try not to keep it out of the water for too long I used a bowl full of tank water with a little of the kent iodine in it when I did my branching torch and frogspawns. then when I was ready to do the sutrgery I layed it on clean papertowels moistened with tank water. and I did the breaks by hand. then I let the coral sit in the bowl of tank water and iodine for 10 mins then set back in the tank.

The only reason I had to do this was to save my corals I think RTN was spreading from one branch to another I was able to save 4 of 6 branches on my torch and 2 of six on my frogspawn.

Just be carefull and good luck.

Clay

[oregon_gorge]

I had one with 13 heads. One day placing it in the sand, it broke. Now I have two separate colonies. In fact they are doing so well the heads have three and four crowns on each branch. They are very cool!


If you work in your tank enough, you will break him anyway and you wont have to stress over it. It will be done

At first, the thought of fragging scared me to death. Now, its fun to make the scape better and help out the newbies and have trading material too!

Good luck, Chris