coral frags

jyatteau · 05-05-2007, 08:41 PM

I m going to try to word this the best I can so bare with me. When you buy a coral frag, for instance i just bought a frog spawn and a torch coral, what is the hard bone like stuff that the coral grows out of? I imagine it is like its body but I am not sure. Also, if it is its "body", will it grow, or branch to make new pieces? And if it can do that, give a good quality environment, how long does it take to grow new ones? Thanks for any information.

Andyoybna · 05-05-2007, 08:52 PM

Ok, well first off, is it branching or anchored frogspawn and torch? Either way, it will grow, however different ways. The anchoring frogspawn or torch will just get a larger base and fill in, and the branching will grow new branches.

Are you asking how to frag them? I recently fragged my branching frogspawn, and it was actually very easy. You need a dremel tool with a diamond heavy duty bit, and basically you just cut one of the branches off close to the head.

If it is an anchoring coral, you need to take it out of water, and let it contract all the way and get as much water out of it as possible, then with the same dremel tool, you want to carefully plan your cut, and take care not to cut into the flesh of the coral, you want to cut through the bone all the way around. It should take 4-6 weeks to completely heal from this, and is definately more complicated than branching corals.

Also, the hard skelton or body, is just that, it is basically bone, it is the calcium bone of the coral.

jyatteau · 05-05-2007, 08:54 PM

how do you tell the difference between anchored or branching?

Andyoybna · 05-05-2007, 11:41 PM

Branching corals will have several polyps coming off of a single, for lack of a better word... branch(gotta hate when you have to use the word in the definition)

And I'm not sure how to describe anchoring other than it is just one large mass. Here is a picture of my anchoring hammer, I'll get a picture of the frogspawn in the morning when the polyps are retracted.

Not the best picture in the world, but here you can see how the frogspawn as several branches.