Cutting my Colt Coral

[brad]

The front and center of my 120 is a huge colt. It has nice color, flowing flowery polyps, and is a wonderful coral, and I'm kind of attached to it. It is just growing too fast. The branches already smooch against the glass and get stung by everything, and it takes up so much room. To put this in perspective, it was a tiny frag less than 1 year ago.

I am thinking of cutting off all the branches, attaching them to small rocks, and raffling them off to make money for the local saltwater club.

Without the branches, I will have a big stump. Will this grow new branches, or should I just toss it? Should I cut the branches one at a time, or just all at once? I have tried making small frags, without success (never attached and slowly shriveled), I have never tried a big branch. I'd hate to lose the whole thing, it is one my favorite corals. Is losing everything a real concern?

[Carlos]

This will help:

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2002-06/ac/feature/index.htm

[ReefGeekster]

You can butcher it up without worrying too much, I myself would keep a couple of the nice frags. I'd attach colt coral to a rock using a rubberband and later after it attaches itself cut and remove the rubberband.

[puma]

Ok here we go

1- use a plastic bowl with aquarium water
2- Put the coral in it
3. cut the pieces you want with a very very sharp instrument( be careful) if the coral its too slimy, let the coral more time in the bowl
until the slime stop and then put it back to the tank.
4- atach the cuts on a rock using a sofh material, rubber band eventualy cut the animal again because of the pressure, use some medical material for injuries, like bands special cures on human skin( sorry i dint know the name in english by now).
5- let the babys close to the parent colony, its very importan.
Good luck my friend.;)

[Newreeflady]

I let my spagetti leather attach itself, just lay it in rubble, takes a couple weeks and you can't have too much flow to knock it out of place. I normally cut branches that are touching the glass, but cut them in a way so they aren't noticible. Recently I chopped the whole thing and moved it to my 10g tank, it is recovering and will soon attach like the frag of itself it has been put next to.

angela.

[Ken2001]

Don't worry too much about cutting your colt. I chop mine all the time, both because it gets so huge so quickly, and for trade at the local LFS, and for reefers in my local club. It's really easy to frag these guys. Get a new razor blade, cut the branches off at the base, where they branch out from the main stalk, place them on the substrate, in a low flow area, and let them adhere to either the rock you are going to place them on, or onto the substrate. Don't use rubber bands, as these will usually either cut right through the colt, or they will slip off. If the colt adheres to substrate rather than the rock you wanted them on, then use super glue to glue the substrate adhering to the bottom of the colt to the rock. These guys slime a lot when you cut them, so if you have a separate fragging tank or quarantine tank, use this.

Don't throw away the base of the parent colt -- you'll likely have the base sprout new trunks. Just leave the base stuck to the live rock it's currently on. Unless you're feeling really generous, leave at least one stalk on the parent colony. This will give it a better chance of coming back quickly.

Good luck,

Ken

[Richard Walston]

ken2001

After you cut your Colt coral and attach it to a rock how long does it usually take to recover from the surgery. I fraged one last night and tonight I still see the fraged coral piece is still compressed up and not extending itself unlike the mother colony is. Just wondering if I need to watch for any failing signs. This is my first attempt at fraging a coral.

Thank You for all the help.