So you decided to frag your Toadstool? W/Pics
 

So I finally decided to chop up my medium sized Toadstool Leather corals.

If you have ever wanted to do the same, here is a little pictoral confidence booster.

if you have experience fragging Leathers and see something you would do different, please speak up.

I have fragged Leathers before, but am always learning....

Step One.
Select the coral to be fragged.
Get two small containers of tankwater and set up your work area.
I would recommend a clean cutting board, a razor knife,
some thread, crazy glue and some small pieces of live rock.

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Step Two.
Place the Toadstool leather upside down on the cutting board.

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Step Three.
Carefully cut around the stalk of the coral creating a doughnut type shape.

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Step Four.
Slice the doughnut shaped ring into fairly equally sized pieces.

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Step Five.
Place the stalk into the first container of tankwater.

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Step Six.
Get the rock rubble and thread ready.

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Step Seven.
Hold the rock and new frag of coral together.
Carefully wind the string firmly around the coral.
(But not tight enough to cut into the coral).
Apply a drop of crazy glue to the thread.
(This will prevent the string from coming unwound).

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Step Eight.
Place the coral frags into the second container of tankwater.

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Now put your fragged pieces and the original coral back into your tank.
Gently swish the mucous off them as you remove them from the small containers of tankwater.

In about a month, your frags should be firmly attatched to the rock they are tied to.
At that point, use a razor knife to carefully remove the string.

I had a good time fragging my corals tonight and I hope this is helpful for others
who are thinking about doing the same.

Very nice. I posted a little while back about the same method (the same method that Calfo showed our club) but I didn't have any photos to go with it.

very nice write up! 1 question how long can the tadstool stay out of water for? how long did you keep it out for?

Nice !, i do my fragging a bit differently, but yours is really great & written extremly well with excellent pictures ;)

I kept it out just long enough to do the cutting.

I put the cut pieces back into the containers of tankwater as soon as possible.

During this whole experience, I never left any piece out of the water more than a minute or two. But the pieces were exposed at least three times (initial cut and making the frags, gluing the frags to the rock, putting the new frags into my tanks.)

I am intentionally damaging this coral by fragging it and do not want to put any more stress onto it than I absolutely have to.

I use the same method but I use rubberbands instead of fishing line to secure the frag to the rock.

i too use rubber bands, ...

greatly illustrated thread though!

Rubberbands work great, I just didnt have any at this time. I did have some sewing thread, so I have started using it instead. I find crazy glue helps keep the thread from unraveling. Unraveling thread is a major issue otherwise as your corals will likely float away before they can grow onto the rock.

I Should also mention that any fragging should be done only after your corals have properly adjusted to your tank in the first place. Wait a few months after you get them and you will notice they suddenly start growing wildly on their own. At that point you should consider fragging them. Anyone buying a coral and fragging it right away is likely to have bad results.

Good write up. While I wouldn't advocate keeping them out of the water any longer than necessary, I've seen Sarco's at low tide lying on the rocks totally exposed to the tropical sun for over an hour before the tide came back in, none the worse for wear.
With a bigger coral, you can just cut a ring out of the rim and treat them the same way as per your method. Getting carried away with fragging a big one can foul your whole tank with their mucous.
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I noticed it leaning over so placed a rock under it. When it attached to the second rock, I cut in between the two and produced this
[IMG]http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y248/yardboy/firstfragofftheleather031205resize.jpg[/IMG]

Great job with the pictures and instructions. I will use this method when my leather gets bigger.

what do you do if you cant take it out of the tank? can i just nip some pieces off with some sharp scissors?

Reach right inside with the razor knife and frag it in place.

Remove the fragged pieces and pick up at step five.

(Only if you have a large tank and plenty of carbon in the sump and lots of water change water lying about).

Here is the part where I get to show off my healthy growing new frags and parent colonies.
If you look carefully,
you will see the string holding the frags onto the rockwork has
split some of the frags in half and I ended up with a bunch of double frags.
So instead of about fifteen frags I get twenty-something frags.
Most importantly, the frags have all grown onto the rocks
and the parent colonies have healed up
and everything has excellent polyp extension.
Oh yes, I did not lose a single frag!

Parent colony with new polyps growing and skin healed up nicely
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The other parent colony showing healed skin and beginning of new polyps
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A couple of the frags healthy and growing
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Look closely and you can see the string holding the frag to the rock
and splitting the frag in half at the same time
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I have a question. I have a green toadstool that has a split stalk (on two different rocks) and is very slowly spliting in half from the top down to the stock. It has been like this for several months and was wondering if I could cut the coral at the base of the stock to seperate it from the two rocks because I am in the process of breaking down my large tank?

Thanks for your time
Ian

why not just make 2 toadstools attatched to two different rocks? You can chop up a toadstool pretty much any way you like. They have amazing powers of regeneration. But if you don't want a bunch of frags strewn all over, I wouldn't remove the coral from the rockwork it is attached to.

And if you do cut yours up, make sure you put the pieces back into your tank and let them heal before transfering them to a new tank. That kind of stress would be very hard on any coral.