Fragging?

[GaryZ]

I'm almost embarrased to ask this, but what is fragging? I see the word everywhere but I can't seem to find a definition. The best I can deduce is that it has something to do with taking a piece off of an existing coral to grow a new one. Am I close?

[charlie]

That is exactly what it is!!

[Peterock]

Its where you cut a peice of a coral you have and either trade it or sale it usely its about 1-2 inches of a peice of coral.

[scubadude]

Many ways to frag corals

I just fragged a kenya tree of mine in my tank so I took a few pics.

Heres some of the tools I used

Sorry bout the quality of the pic, as you can see some of the tools are rusty but if you notice I did take a wire wheel to the parts that where gonna contact the frag or close to it and cleaned up the tools

Here is a picture of the kenya tree before I fragged it, as you can see it has grown into 2 seperate corals but they are very close together on the same rock


My first step was to take the whole rock out of the tank and cut the rock between the two corals seperating them.


I wanted to make 3 different pieces out of this instead of two so I took a piece of LR rubble (the piece on the right) for mounting a new seperated coral to.


I used the rubberband method here cuz kenya trees (as well as colts or any leathers, sinularia or many soft corals) have a hard time sticking to your newly mounted surface.


Some people like to stop there and let the restriction slowly seperate the two pieces, I personally dont like this method and find it a little more time consuming and prefer to take a very clean razor and slit where you actually want the two pieces to be seperated.

Heres the piece cut and seperated and finally in the tank. However before putting the piece into the tank I have in a bowl or cup some tank water (with a drop or two of iodine) that I let the frag sit in for about 5min. This will let the frag slime and keep the slime out of your tank and give it a chance to start healing somewhat, and dont put the tankwater from the bowl/cup back into your tank! Any piece that I cut or handle extensively I do this procedure too.

Other methods include stitching with thread or twine, chiseling, bandsaws, using lace to net and hold on with rubberbands. superglue (mostly SPS, and LPS, few select softies like zoos) 2 part marine epoxy, restriction by wedging rocks between corals, and the unexpecting or expecting dropping on the ground.

[GaryZ]

Cool post Rocky.

[scubadude]

Now 2 weeks later heres a pic of the Kenya tree and as you can see at the base of the frag it has already attached to the rock....I just took the rubber band off and its in place fine now with out any help



FWIW I probably could have tooken the band off about a week ago cuz the frag was starting to attach to the rubberband as well.

[Samper]

Definately a good post Rocky.