Fragging 101 I Sun Coral

[mikejrice]

Methodology:

The method I use for fragging the majority of hard corals is primarily the same with the cutting tooling being an Inland band saw.

Cooling liquid used is fresh mixed saltwater with enough iodine to color it a light amber. This helps to disinfect cuts as they're made which has shown to greatly increase frag survival.

All corals are stored during cutting in a small bucket holding water taken directly from their home aquarium. This water is used both to keep them wet as well as for rinsing any flesh away from cuts while I'm working on them.

All finished, and rinsed, frags or trimmed colonies are soaked in Brightwell Aquatics Restor dip to insure that minimal flesh is lost.

Both soak buckets are rinsed and replenished between colonies to reduce the risk of interactions between loose flesh of different coral species.

Notes about sun coral:

It's vital when cutting sun coral to preserve the corallites as much as possible, so when cutting them, I always follow paths directly between polyps.

As with most corals, I like to get them mounted as low as possible on frag plugs. To do this I cut all frags down parallel to the living surface of the animal. While doing this, it's important not to cut into the portion of the skeleton that has color due to living flesh.

If there's a specific species you would like to see fragged, comment below.

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[DaveK]

This is really what you need to do to frag LPS corals. In addition to the band saw, you also need the courage to slice up that prize coral into some frags.

 

[mikejrice]

This is really what you need to do to frag LPS corals. In addition to the band saw, you also need the courage to slice up that prize coral into some frang.

Courage is key getting started!

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[Oxylebius]

I've taken hand held loppers on some of my thicker >3 inch corals (SPS and Duncanes). I don't have access to such a nice saw. When fragging my duncanes, there was some soft fleshy tissue inside the calcium coral shell that I hit. The corals all survived the fragging. I suspect that the sun corals may also have this soft fleshy tissue inside as well. Do you often hit this? Or did I cut too close, which is what I suspected.

 

[mikejrice]

I've taken hand held loppers on some of my thicker >3 inch corals (SPS and Duncanes). I don't have access to such a nice saw. When fragging my duncanes, there was some soft fleshy tissue inside the calcium coral shell that I hit. The corals all survived the fragging. I suspect that the sun corals may also have this soft fleshy tissue inside as well. Do you often hit this? Or did I cut too close, which is what I suspected.

Usually when you look at the frag you cut off from the bottom it shouldn't have any flesh visible. You may have cut a little close to the head and got into the base of the animal a bit. Luckily, duncans are really tough so should bounce back easily. The flesh inside sun coral doesn't reach down as far as with duncans in my experience. Euphyllia is where you really have to watch out as they don't always react well to getting into their lower flesh areas inside the skeleton.

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