Kessil

Faster growing frags? Suspended frags? Micro frags?

I recall we had a talk in the club many years back on something similar, the idea is fairly simple, if a coral grows at rate of 1" a year, and to be simple lets say a single branch, then in 2 years you get approximately 2" of coral growth, however if you take that one coral and chop it into 10 pieces, then in 2 years you get 2" x 10 pieces = 20" of coral.

Or a better view with encrusting corals, say you had a 5" x 5" square of montipora and it pushes out in each direction (except up) at the rate of 1" per year, after 1 year that 5x5 square turns into approximately a 7x7 square so you went from 25 square inches to 49, or almost double in size. Now take that same 5x5 and chop it up into 25 1x1 squares, each 1x1 square also grows at 1" a year, now those 1x1 push out to a 3x3 at the end of a year, so 9 square inches x 25 = 225 square inches, or an increase in 9 times the amount of growth, and if you extrapolate even further the smaller you make your initial frags the more overall growth you'll get.

Now this is a very simplified view as it doesn't take into account branching that occurs, and I was a little loose with my area math for growth but I don't think there's much more to it than that, since corals are rigid structures and don't "push" other parts, i.e. grow from the inside pushes outward. Either way, I think this might be an interesting experiment for Maureen's class tank, just take 2 big frags of a monti cap, one grow by itself, the other smash into a bunch of tiny pieces and see which has more growth after a few months.
 
Blender fragging... not just for mushrooms anymore!

It makes sense to have the frags down to the size of the smallest independent unit that can grow by itself. The same idea has been in use for skin grafts for many years in people.
 
Corals don’t grow linearly, they double every x months and the x depends on on your skills at coral husbandry. The reason you might want to grow out from many small pieces of acropora is often coral frags stop growing vertically once they’re cut because they want to anchor down, and they will only grow new branches from new encrustment.
 
Gonna have to disagree here with the idea that corals double in size within a fixed set time period. Sure their growth might not exactly be linear but it tends to be a fixed amount based upon the ratio of surface area (or perimeter) to volume. And yes said "skill" can tweak that a bit, but not double, as corals get bigger the grow slower this is a fact of life and is observed in tanks and in nature.
 
I don’t know if it’s the same for every coral.

@Chromis I think is speaking from her experience with Acropora (and other branching sps). Each individual polyp has the possibility of doubling and making another polyp and it can grow in all possible directions. No matter if it is fragged or part of a colony those same number of polyps still only have the opportunity to make polyps at a certain rate. I think she’s right in thinking that that rate is dependant on good husbandry.

@sfsuphysics I think is coming from an LPS position where the coral will grow in size based on the “circumference”. In that scenario if the rate of growth of its diameter is consistent then the collective growth of all the frags would be greater that if it was a whole piece.
 
Interesting. I saw a thing years ago when Eric Borneman was slicing thin rings of acros so so small.
Incidentally, the suspended frag "trees" in that video are the same type my students will be working on to replace the plastic.
 
It takes a long time to grow out a micro frag. I can see microfrags working if you have multiples of them that will fuse, but if you only have one then it takes a long while. I have the RR firecracker and the JD, which are small 1/4" - 3/8" microfrags. The firecracker has yet to encrust the 1" plug that it was mounted on in the 4 months that I've had it. The JD is newer and will probably take 4-5 months to even encrust a 3/4" - 1" area. I know someone that also picked up the JD and it took his 5 months to encrust 3/4" plug.

Corals don’t grow linearly, they double every x months and the x depends on on your skills at coral husbandry. The reason you might want to grow out from many small pieces of acropora is often coral frags stop growing vertically once they’re cut because they want to anchor down, and they will only grow new branches from new encrustment.

Usually this is case but not always. Take for instance, this is the ORA pearlberry on 4/22/18.

2018_04_22_ora_pearlberry.jpg


The center branch can be seen and the encrusting base grows out and new tips shoots out mostly from the encrusting base.

While most of the grow is on the peripheral encrusting base, the center tip is still growing. Here it is today with the picture centered around the center branch, where it's shooting out additional branches from (5 at the moment).
2018_10_16_ora_pearlberry.jpg
 
It takes a long time to grow out a micro frag. I can see microfrags working if you have multiples of them that will fuse, but if you only have one then it takes a long while. I have the RR firecracker and the JD, which are small 1/4" - 3/8" microfrags. The firecracker has yet to encrust the 1" plug that it was mounted on in the 4 months that I've had it. The JD is newer and will probably take 4-5 months to even encrust a 3/4" - 1" area. I know someone that also picked up the JD and it took his 5 months to encrust 3/4" plug.



Usually this is case but not always. Take for instance, this is the ORA pearlberry on 4/22/18.

2018_04_22_ora_pearlberry.jpg


The center branch can be seen and the encrusting base grows out and new tips shoots out mostly from the encrusting base.

While most of the grow is on the peripheral encrusting base, the center tip is still growing. Here it is today with the picture centered around the center branch, where it's shooting out additional branches from (5 at the moment).
2018_10_16_ora_pearlberry.jpg
The question is then, in your opinion/experience, will that pearlberry grow faster if you frag it into smaller pieces or leave it as is? Or do you think it wouldn’t grow faster under either circumstance?
 
That's a good question. It would probably grow faster if it was fragged into smaller pieces and then fused, but then I would only do so if your purpose is to farm the coral. Most SPS grow pretty quickly once they hit golf ball in size so with this piece it wouldn't matter.

I'm leaving this piece alone because I'm not interested in farming it, but rather keeping it. It's grown into the shape and size it is due to the growing conditions (light and flow) that it's been subjected to. By fragging it into a million pieces (in this case, I could frag ~15-20 pieces which are 3/4-1" and still be left with the encrusting base) I lose out on the shape of it. Now if my purpose was to power grow this frag to cover a huge rock, then yes, it would make sense to microfrag it down into 30-40 pieces and spreading that over the entire rock surface.
 
Have an extra frag of RR The Vinh that I forgot to take down to RAP for a buddy. Might as well test it out to see if this works.

Well encrusted double branch frag
upload_2018-10-19_11-43-52.png


Microfragged and reglued down to disk. Now we wait to see how many of the microfrags make it and how fast this piece grows.
upload_2018-10-19_11-44-5.png


Reference will be against the other piece that I have on the rock. Same source with both frags in the tank on the same day. Approximately the same size for both.
2018_10_19_rr_the_vinh.jpg
 
There's ~1/8" difference between the two frags. The one on the rocks gets more flow so it's thicker in comparison, whereas the one in lower flow is more spread out in structure.

Can't be at the same height since that's a 3" disk there that I can't get onto the rockwork. Both frags were growing at the same pace even though they are at different heights. Colors are more muddy on the lower piece even though it has kept up with growth. This was a set of pics taken awhile back with both frags on the same day.

2018_09_19_rr_thevinh_parcomparo.jpg
 
Last edited:
There's ~1/8" difference between the two frags. The one on the rocks gets more flow so it's thicker in comparison, whereas the one in lower flow is more spread out in structure.

Can't be at the same height since that's a 3" disk there that I can't get onto the rockwork. Both frags were growing at the same pace even though they are at different heights. Colors are more muddy on the lower piece even though it has kept up with growth. This was a set of pics taken awhile back with both frags on the same day.

2018_09_19_rr_thevinh_parcomparo.jpg
Awesome experiment. Very interested in the results.
 
Micro frags are still alive, although 2-3 of them didn't keep all 100% of their tissue. Still monitoring and will update once I see encrustation occurring.

Picked up a few frags from TSA, which included a GARF bonsai. One of the questions that always comes up is what happens when the frag comes encrusted. I usually don't trust any plugs and the piece is usually removed and whatever remnants of the encrustation is chucked. In the case of the bonsai, I decided to save the encrustation since I'm experimenting with micro frags.

The bonsai shipped well, but came with a nasty looking plug. Per usual, visual inspection before dipping and removal from plug.
upload_2018-10-31_12-8-40.png


The central branch was removed and the base came apart in multiple pieces when I tried to lift it. Those were all glued on the same plug as well.
upload_2018-10-31_12-10-41.png


Into the tank after the whole process. Polyps are still showing on the shattered base pieces, so it'll be interesting to see how this does.
upload_2018-10-31_12-10-59.png
 
Back
Top