Introduction
From 1998 to 2005 I ran my own Coral Farming business,
called The Other World. As well as propagating a large variety of
coral species, part of my 'mission' was to encourage other fishkeepers
to have a go at propagating their own corals. One of the most popular
parts of The Other World's website was my coral propagation guide,
parts of which are reproduced on Gabooch.co.uk. Below is a brief
description of my method for propagating 'Plate' corals.
What you need:
Method
Step 1 - Select a healthy parent
coral to propagate from. You should look for an animal that is growing
well, showing good polyp extension (where applicable), displaying
good colouration and is generally in an all round healthy condition.
Step 2 - Select the section of
coral you wish to remove, and carefully snap it from the parent
animal. It is generally easier to 'work' on the parent animal if
it is out of the water, so it may be worth removing the parent from
the tank while you frag it. Generally Plate Montiporas (and many
other 'plate' corals) are very brittle, and they will crumble as
you snap them, so try to snap off fairly large bits (or you may
end up with loads of tiny bits which are too small to do anything
with!).
Step 3 - Attach the cuttings to
your substrate with superglue. We find plate corals generally do
better when mounted horizontally, rather than vertically. It is
possible to attach several small bits of a given coral onto the
same substrate (useful if you have ended up with lots of small bits
of the parent animal - see above!) - as the individual pieces grow,
they will often fuse together and form a single large plate coral.
We have mounted up to 7 small pieces of Montipora capricornis
onto a single Milliput disc in the past, and had them all fuse together
without any problems.
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The above picture shows a month-old
Montipora capricornis frag "growing out"
- note that this frag consists of two 'sections' mounted
next to each other. The area between the yellow arrows is
the "join" which has almost completely fused in
this picture. |
Step 4 - Place the new frag in
a suitable position in the tank - preferably with the same amount
of water movement and light as the parent coral was in. Return the
parent coral (if you had to remove it) to the exact position it
was in.
Step 5 - Rinse any equipment you
have used in freshwater, to remove any coral mucus and saltwater.
Wash your hands thoroughly!
I have used this technique on Montipora capricornis
and Turbinaria sp. corals.
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