Devil's hand Leather propagation??

[jasno999]

I have a devil's hand that I would like to propagate for a local person in my area. I have read a few ways to do it but wanted to get opinions from people on the board on the best way to propagate a smal piece.

[baugherb]

When I fragged mine, I just cut a stalk of with a razor blade. It grew back quick... Try for a clean cut...

[Matt Rogers]

Here is something I wrote from a while back in the articles section:

"
Many soft corals are pretty easy to frag. Remove the specimen and place in a Tupperware bowl with some tank water. Use sterile and sharp scissors and cut about a 1" piece. (Mushrooms can be cut like pie.) At this point you can dry it a bit with a towel and put some superglue on the bottom of it to attach it to some substrate or rock and lightly tying with a rubber band so it doesn't float away. Or, alternatively, use fine plastic mesh like a wedding veil to secure it to a rock. Doing so on a small rock is a good idea should you want to move it later - commonly they are put toward the bottom of the tank so there is less shock with less light and current until they recover (May take a couple of weeks).


At this point you want to discard the water in the Tupperware as it will contain a lot of slimy mucus from the cutting that you don't want to put back in your aquarium. Oops. Almost forgot. I am not a big rubber glove guy, but this is surgery and you might want to use some for your protection and that of the coral. You don't want to wipe that stuff in your eye."


Hope that helps.

[vtfishies]

yep works..also other than wedding vail mesh..u can go to local grocery store and get those puffs ( used for body wash's) rinse out with water as to get the dust off it..good to go..last's for a while..inexpensive!

[Scott Osborne]

When it comes to softies the way I've been doing it since Calfo showed me is to mount a plastic toothpick on a disk or plug. Then take the cut frag and spear it through the coral. Then place a dot of superglue on the end of the toothpick to keep the coral inplace. Once the frag has mounted itself remove any protruding toothpick with a pair of dikes. There are several corals that do much better with this method. Include Sinularia, Sarcophyton, and Nepthea.

If you can manage a sharp sterile scalpel is always better than scissors. There is less damage to the soft flesh from a single cut than with the crushing cut that even razor sharp surgical scissors give.

[jasno999]

Originally Posted by Matt Rogers

Here is something I wrote from a while back in the articles section:

"
Many soft corals are pretty easy to frag. Remove the specimen and place in a Tupperware bowl with some tank water. Use sterile and sharp scissors and cut about a 1" piece. (Mushrooms can be cut like pie.) At this point you can dry it a bit with a towel and put some superglue on the bottom of it to attach it to some substrate or rock and lightly tying with a rubber band so it doesn't float away. Or, alternatively, use fine plastic mesh like a wedding veil to secure it to a rock. Doing so on a small rock is a good idea should you want to move it later - commonly they are put toward the bottom of the tank so there is less shock with less light and current until they recover (May take a couple of weeks).


At this point you want to discard the water in the Tupperware as it will contain a lot of slimy mucus from the cutting that you don't want to put back in your aquarium. Oops. Almost forgot. I am not a big rubber glove guy, but this is surgery and you might want to use some for your protection and that of the coral. You don't want to wipe that stuff in your eye."


Hope that helps.

From my readign and knowedge of leather corals it is not suggested and in some cases impossiable to mount the coral to anything using super glue. This is due to the fact that the coral slimes....

I decided to cut a section with a pair of sizors. I did it quickley and did it in the tank. It was very easy and the coral never ever slimed. I then took the cut section and rubber banded it to a coral disk and I will leave it there until it hopefully attaches. Amazing part was later that night the mother coral was healign up and the cut section actually had it's little feelers out and was expanded and looking good. As a helper I added some iodine to the tank after the cuts were made. So far so good. Never even had a sliming.

[rz1a]

could i cut one of these in the tank? i want to get rid of it because im starting to put more SPS in the tank and want the softies out

[Scott Osborne]

This is at your own risk!

I cut softies all the time in my tank. I do have very aggressive skimming and lots of highend carbon in a reactor though. If you cut the stalk the remainder could form a new coral.

Why do you want to get rid of it? I keep a couple softies in my sps reef. Just runs lots of carbon and change it frequently.

[Dador]

I'm going to give it a try.