Finger leather propagation

[Musipilot]

Greetings all. I've propagated mushrooms and acropora..I'm ready to take the plunge with this beautiful finger leather I have.

Questions: Is there a general method recommended for these guys? Also...the coral is very long, almost shaped like a slipper or tounge coral, and I was wondering if I could split it in two, down the middle, in half. Any ideas?

Thanks.

[logical]

Splitting is actually my preferred method of propping something I havent done before. I just split my Fiji Yellow Leather 2 weeks ago, straight through the middle of the cap and down the center of stem to the rock. Left them both attached in good flow, actually the same spot it was in before(i think that is important too)

Now I have 2 clones sharing the rock, but this weekend I will cut about halfway down the stem on one and completely remove its cap to cut into 3-4 smaller frags.

PRos- IMO, this increases survival rates and lowers risk of losing colony. I risked the whole piece with the intial split, but, if it couldnt handle that, it most likely would not have taken well to any cap fragging as well. Now I no I won't lose stock, and can work on one half as frags while knowing the other half is protected, healthy and regrowing.

Cons- Just the risk I mentioned above. And it adds some time to the whole method while you wait out the split to make sure its healed before fragging any more.

So, I think yes, you should split it down the middle and go form there.
Then, once you know the strength of "mother colony" you can do smaller frags in the future wir]th ease.

PEace, Bryan

[KMatysek]

We split a devil's finger leather the same way I think you're thinking of - not down the middle top to bottom, but cutting the top half away from the bottom half so that you remove some of its height.

In our case we had had a very tough time placing it in the tank because it was on a very small piece of rock and I wasn't ready to glue it, so we lodged it in a spot over a branch of live rock that had a hole. After several months we discovered that it had shot it's base down through the hole a good 6-8 inches looking for a more firm base (even though the portion above the rock looked the same over this period). We pulled it out and cut it (because it was really too top heavy at that point). I figured the top would survive and we'd just see what happened to the base. Well, the base didn't survive, although I thought for months that it would. It's possible that something else did it in and you might have luck that way. Leathers are supposed to be easy to propagate, so if you want to shorten it anyway, it's probably not too risky. At least the top half should make it, based on my experience.