Frag experiment

[ccCapt]

Around Christmas time last year I decided to do a little experiment. Most of the frags you see are mounted pointing up. I wanted to try something different, so I fragged about a 1" piece of a stag I have and mounted it flat on a small piece of live rock about 3"x3".

Here it is on 4-08. You can see the piece it started as in the middle. It really encrusted the rock, but didn't really have any verticle growth.

In 5-08 I start to see some sprouts popping up.

Jump ahead to 8-08 and it's really starting to take off.

9-08

And here it is now (10-08).

 

[Bifferwine]

Wow, it's a frag forest!! You can certainly get more pieces from mounting a flat piece, it seems.

 

[dustin_P74]

awesome growth

 

[reeffreak]

Awesome,it's a wonder why people don't do this more often.

 

[Oscarsdad608]

I watched a pretty good video on this. The bare flesh were you cut the frag is most likely to get infected. So when you lay it down that can heal faster because it isn't covered in glue. I have been laying my frags down for awhile now.

 

[RyanG]

Thats pretty sweet Capt. Ive seen some of the local guys doing the same thing. Not so much on a frag disk but making sure they mount the frag sideways in the tank. Seems to promote tableing pretty well.

 

[ccCapt]

Supposedly the theory behind this in that in nature, when coral get broken they fall and land flat. It can "sense" it's laying down so it starts encrusting onto whatever it lands on so it has a stable base for the new colony to grow from.
Sort of makes sense by what the pics show.

 

[yote]

Huge difference in growth.
Looks great.

 

[daugherty]

that is something i am going to have to try thank forr the info

 

[Piggy]

Great growth. Thanks for the info. I can truly say I learned something new today.

 

[Rcpilot]

HOLY CRAP!! :bounce:

I have some kind of green acro with purple polyps. I placed it on it's died and wedged it into a crack and it has taken 18 months for it to spread out and encrust over the crack. It was a 1" x 1/2" stick 18 months ago. Today it has encrusted about 2" x 3" of the rock.

I just noticed little points or peaks in the center of it last week. Maybe it's going to start growing UP now instead of out? I'm so excited to see this thread. I thought I'd ruined my frag. Didn't know how to care for it. Didn't know how to mount it. Didn't know how it should look as it grew. Now I'm really excited.

 

[ccCapt]

Little update. It's about 1 yr now since I mounted the 1" frag (you can still see it in the middle) flat on the rock. The "colony" is a little over 3" tall now.

Nov 08

Jan 09

 

[dustin_P74]

the colony looks good and you seem to have a fast grower on your hands

 

[Piggy]

Looks great.

 

[daugherty]

i did this with the peice of the birdsnest i saved from when i lost power and is is growing good so far. you pics are great ccapt and your tank is amazing

 

[simpleman]

Nice Ccapt. I should have just done this with a slimer I just had to frag.

 

[yote]

Nice growth.

 

[Oscarsdad608]

I do it with all my frags. You can start with a lot smaller piece.

 

[d2mini]

This is cool!
I have a little piece that broke and fell on to the top of one of my rocks. It's probably only about 1/2 to 3/4 of an inch long. I just left it out of laziness. Maybe it will do the same!

 

[RAYRAY]

great experiment ccapt. Looks great now !