Kessil

Are we actually propagating acros correctly ?

So I pull my favorite acro out of the tank, pop it on the table and begin fragging. I take the branches, put a drop of Super Glue on the base, and glue it to a frag plug. I let it sit on the table, and when it is set, I pop it back into the tank. Why? Because that is the way everyone does it. It is the way we teach reefers to do it here on the BAR website, and every acro frag that I have seen is mounted like a "little tree".
Well did you know that if you were to lay that frag on it's side and mount it laying down, it would encrust the frag plug 3-5 times faster? and it would produce nearly twice as many branches after a year?
Then we get to the taking it out of the water part. Everyone says it is fine to have them out of water, and we all know that sometimes a frag just doesn't make it and dies. Well if you frag and mount underwater, never exposing the coral to air, your sucess rate will be close to 100%.

Cheers! Mark
 
Nice video and makes a lot of sense. I think we just make acro frags like “little trees” so the end recipient can pop most of the coral off and chuck the frag plug.
 
So I pull my favorite acro out of the tank, pop it on the table and begin fragging. I take the branches, put a drop of Super Glue on the base, and glue it to a frag plug. I let it sit on the table, and when it is set, I pop it back into the tank. Why? Because that is the way everyone does it. It is the way we teach reefers to do it here on the BAR website, and every acro frag that I have seen is mounted like a "little tree".
Well did you know that if you were to lay that frag on it's side and mount it laying down, it would encrust the frag plug 3-5 times faster? and it would produce nearly twice as many branches after a year?
Then we get to the taking it out of the water part. Everyone says it is fine to have them out of water, and we all know that sometimes a frag just doesn't make it and dies. Well if you frag and mount underwater, never exposing the coral to air, your sucess rate will be close to 100%.

Cheers! Mark
I mount that way all the time. Not to mention the cut part tends to heal and grow faster
 
Actually did an experiment with a help of a friend to confirm this with ORA pearlberry frags. They were mounted in a manner of different orientation: straight up like a tree (control), upside down (OG Garf method), on the side, and at 45° angle. This test was started on June 1, 2017 and the frags were monitored up to around last month.

The 45° angle pearlberry did a hair better than the sideways one, and the others were all tied. All four plugs were encrusted at this point, but the difference was the amount of axial corallites.

I'll have to do a write up on the experiment when I get a chance.
 
Nice video and makes a lot of sense. I think we just make acro frags like “little trees” so the end recipient can pop most of the coral off and chuck the frag plug.
This is the main reason for me. I discard all plugs and whatever is encrusted on the plugs. So it’s easier when it’s glued on the end instead of the side.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Yeah I would almost always put on the side when I mounted back in the day, seemed like an obvious thing to do, more coral in contact with a surface so more encrusting and more direct facing surface for light. I would think with everyone doing LEDs now this would be even more apparent since they dont tend to have the multiangle cover like a metal halide

I think the vertical orientation is show/sale, and because we see them like that we assume thats the way they need to be.

That said mounting them horizontally effectively kills half the coral ... unless you got a thick branch you can butterfly with a bandsaw
 
I think of the plug as the temporary coral holder for safe transport and find it easier to remove the coral from the holder if is isn’t laying sideways encrusting all around. I never glue to the plug itself into my rockscape.

But I think this discussion is very interesting from the standpoint of how to mount the coral frag to the rockscape after removing from the plug. 45 degrees is much more palatable to me than laying flat since you don’t have to kill the whole side of the frag, and can still use the cut end to mount.

I understand and agree with the idea that in the wild, a frag that breaks off would land on another rock laying down sideways, it’s just not as appealing to me, so maybe 45 degrees is a good compromise.

As far as doing everything underwater, it makes sense I guess but it is a lot more difficult and I’ve not seen any evidence or discussion from professionals that it is an important factor.
 
Actually did an experiment with a help of a friend to confirm this with ORA pearlberry frags. They were mounted in a manner of different orientation: straight up like a tree (control), upside down (OG Garf method), on the side, and at 45° angle. This test was started on June 1, 2017 and the frags were monitored up to around last month.

The 45° angle pearlberry did a hair better than the sideways one, and the others were all tied. All four plugs were encrusted at this point, but the difference was the amount of axial corallites.

I'll have to do a write up on the experiment when I get a chance.
Thanks for sharing your results.

So did the sideways and 45 degree ones do better than the others? Implied but you didn’t say. How much better?
 
As far as doing everything underwater, it makes sense I guess but it is a lot more difficult and I’ve not seen any evidence or discussion from professionals that it is an important factor.
Dieter Brockman did an experiment:
Survival rate of fragments relative to size and treatment

In the first experiment, 15 fragments measuring 1 inch (2.5 cm) and 1.75 inches (4.5 cm) in length were obtained from donor corals and glued to substrate rocks out of the water. After 20 days only 13 percent of the smaller fragments were still alive, while the figure was 87 percent for the larger specimens. In a subsequent experiment, fragments of both sizes were glued in place immediately underwater. In this case, 92 percent of the shorter and 100 percent of the longer cuttings survived.
 
  • Like
Reactions: JVU
The only time my frags are out of the water is when they are being cut on the bandsaw. Then they go back into the water. Total outside time maybe less than 30 secs.
 
The only time my frags are out of the water is when they are being cut on the bandsaw. Then they go back into the water. Total outside time maybe less than 30 secs.
Same here. I’ll even use bone cutters and cut it in the tank and then glue it to the plug, again, in the tank. When I receive a frag it’s only out of the water a matter of moments when it’s going through the dipping process.

I had no idea about laying it on its side though.
 
I need some updated shots, but these are the shots at the end of January (30th).

Side profile (left to right is: control, 45°, side, and finally Garf)
19%20001%20Frags%20013018.jpg


Top down
19%20002%20Frags%20Topdown.jpg


You can see the axial corallites on all the pieces in this pic, but the 45° is already ahead at this point. None of the frags were moved once they were in the tank (fresh frag tank) and all grown under LEDs (modified blackbox).
 
hmm I think I'd have a hard time picking any of those as a "winner", it is all really close.

That said the piece certainly colored up very nicely compared to the initial shots.
 
Yeah those all look good. When you have a mature tank with good husbandry, probably doesn’t matter how you mount your frags :).


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
It's the current shot that's the telling point. On the January pic, you can only start to see the axial corallites develop. From the current shot from yesterday, the 45° piece is significantly more developed with new branching.

True that it ultimately doesn't matter how you mount your frags as long as it's in a stable environment and given the right parameters. Slow growth is sometimes a good thing as well if you want to keep a tank that doesn't need constant pruning/fragging.
 
Maybe the coral justs thinks that it fell and its way to survive? No idea, I don't think in the wild when a fish knocks a piece off it lands perfectly straigh up [emoji4] just my theory i doubt it makes any sense.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
 
Back
Top