can you frag a bubble coral or open brain coral?

[fungia]

i am not too worried about my open brain coral, it grows slowly. my bubble coral grows very fast though and i think i need to frag it soon if i can. it has doubled in size, i bought it as a 3 inch skeleton and it is now at least 6 inches and it is over 10 inches wide when it is open. i need to split this monster if i can. anyone know how to frag bubble corals?

 

[Anonymous]

That's a good question. Especially since mine is growing fast.

 

[Anonymous]

I've read about it, but after that, decided there would be no way I would try it myself. In short, it involved dremeling up through the skelton without damaging the flesh and then sitting the pieces on slightly different levels and allowing the coral to separate itsself, thus forming two.

 

[Len]

Tapio at San Diego Corals does it successfully. He actually cuts the flesh instead of letting gravity do the trick. I've done this with Elegance corals, so I imagine Bubbles are similiar. You dremel, saw, or cut the skeleton base (carefully, without damaging the tissue). After you are close to the tissue, you get a very sharp, clean sheer to cut it apart. The cutters used to cut through chicken bone (available at your supermarket) are good for these.

 

[Anonymous]

I'll just let mine grow. :wink:

 

[pwj1286]

On Advanced Aquarist, they were fraging goniporia and succesfull.

On Reefkeepingmag, they were graphing and cold fusion two differnt species of open brains! They graphed them together to form a mix of the two.

Weird.
_________________
Spyder MR1

 

[middletonmark]

I'm so lucky to have a branching bubble - so I was able to very carefully cut it apart with a dremel without having to cut `heads'.

But Len put it well - it's not easy, not something I'd rush ... but doable.

Perhaps trying on a branching stony [caulastrea, frogspawn come to mind] would be a good coral to practice with.

I have seen open brains cut - but IMO a tile saw would be the fastest/cleanest cut. When I cut my maze brain with a dremel - the heat or damage along where the dremel cut had 1/4" of recession - where the `snapped' part had zero recession and started growing on the fresh-broken side quickly. All lived ... just will take a while for it to grow over the area damaged in cutting.